We wandered about the opera-hall and stopped before a particularly beautiful quadrille of powdered stevedores and picrrots with chalked faces. All the four girls were very young, about eighteen or nineteen, pretty and graceful, dancing and enjoying themselves with all their hearts, and imperceptibly passing from the quadrille to the cancan. \Ve had not managed to admire them sufficiently when suddenly the quadrille was disturbed
'owing to circumstances in no way depending on the dancers,' as our journalists used to express it in the happy days of the censorship. One of the dancing girls, and alas! the most beautiful, so skilfully, or so unskilfully, lowered her shoulder that her bodice slipped down, displaying half her bosom and part of her back-a little more than is done by Englishwomen, especially elderly ones who have nothing with which they can attract except their shoulders, at the most decorous routs and in the most conspicuous boxes at Covent Garden (in consequence of which in the second tier it is absolutely impossible to listen to Casta Diva or Sul Salice with due modesty ) . I had scarcely had time to say to the becolded artist: 'If only Michelangelo or Titian were here!
Pick up your brush or she will pull it up again,' when a huge black hand, not that of Michelangelo nor Titian, but of a gardien de Paris, seized her by the scruff of the neck, tore her a\vay from the quadrille, and hauled her off. The girl tried not to go and dragged her feet as children do when they arc to be washed in cold water, but order and human justice gained the upper hand and \Verc satisfied. The other girls and their pierrots
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exchanged glances, found a fresh stevedore, and again began kicking above their heads and bouncing back from each other in order to advance with the more fury, paying hardly any attention to the rape of Proserpine.
'Let us go and sec what the policeman does with her,' I said to my companion. 'I noticed the door he led her through.'
\Ve went do\',;n by a side-staircase. Anyone \vho has seen and remembers a certain dog in bronze looking attenti;'ely and with some excitement at a tortoise can easily picture the scene which we came upon. The luckless girl in her light attire was sitting on a stone step in the p iercing wind in floods of tears; facing her stood a lean, tall municipal in full uniform with a predatory and earnestly stupid air, with a comma of hair on his chin and halfgrey moustaches. He was standing in a dignified attitude with folded arms, watching intently to see how these tears would end, and urging:
'Allons, allons!'
To complete the effect the girl was saying through her whining and tears:
' . . . Et . . . et on dit . . . on dit que . . . que . . . nous sommes en Republique . . . et
. on ne peut danser comme
!'on veut! . . .'
All this was so ludicrous, and so really pathetic, that I resolved to go to the rescue of the captive and to the restoration in her eyes of the republican honour of the form of government.
'i\!on brave,' I said with calculated and insinuating courtesy to the policeman, 'what are you going to do with mademoiselle?'
'I shall put her au violon till to-morrow,' he answered grimly.
The wails increased.
'To teach her to take off her bodice,' added the guardian of order and of public morality.
'It was an accident, brigadier, you might let her off.'
·J can't. La consigne . . . .'
'After all, at a fete . . . .'
'But what business is it of yours? Etes-vous son reciproque?'
'It is the first time I have seen her in my life, parole d' horzncur. I don't know her name, ask her yourself. We are foreigners, and arc surprised to sec you in Paris so strict with a weak girl, avec un Ctrc frelc. In our country it's thought that the police here are so kind . . . . Ho\v is it that they are allowed to dance the cancan at all? For if it is allowed, monsieur le brigadier, sometimes without meaning it a foot will be kicked too high or a blouse will slip too low.'
'That may be so,' the municipal observed, impressed by my
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eloquence, but chiefly hooked by my remark that foreigners have such a flattering opinion of the Parisian police.
'Besides,' I said, 'look what you are doing. You are giving her a cold-how can you bring the child, half-naked, out of that stifling dance-hall and sit her down in the piercing wind?'
'It is her own fault: she won't come. But here, I'll tell you what: if you will give me your word of honour that she shan't go back into the dance-hall to-night, I'll let her go.'
'Bravo! Though as a ma tter of fact I expected no less of you, monsieur le brigadier. I thank you with all my heart.'
I had now to enter into negotiations with the liberated victim.
'Excuse me interfering on your behalf without having the pleasure of being personally acquainted with you.'
She held out a hot, moist little hand to me and looked at me with still moister and hotter eyes.
'You heard how it is? I can't vouch for you if you won't give me your word, or better still if you won't come away at once. It is not a great sacrifice really; I expect it is half-past three by now.'
'I'm ready. I'll go and get my cloak.'
'No,' said the implacable guardian of order, 'not a step from here.'
'Where are your cloak and hat? '
'In loge so-and-so, row so-and-so.' The artist was rushing off, but he stopped to ask: 'But will they give them to me?'
'Only tell them what has happened and that you come from
"Little Leontine" . . . . What a ball that was! ' she added with the air with which people say in a graveyard : 'Sleep in peace.'
'Would you like me to bring a fiacre?'
'I am not alone.'
'With whom then?'
'With a friend.'
The artist returned, his cold definitely very bad, with the hat and cloak and a young shop-assistant or commis-voyageur.
'Very much obliged,' he said to me, touching his ha t, and then to her: 'Always making a scandal ! ' He seized her by the arm almost as roughly as the policeman had by the neck, and vanished into the big vestibule of the Opera . . . . Poor girl . . .
she will catch it . . . and what taste . . . she . . . and he!
I felt positively vexed. I suggested to the artist that we should have a drink. He did not refuse.
A month passed. Five of us, Tausenau, the Vienna agitator, General Haug, Miiller-Striibing, and another gentleman and I arranged another time to go to a ball. Neither Haug nor MUller
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had ever been to one. We stood together in a group. Suddenly a masked figure pushed and broke a way through the crowd, came straight up to me, almost threw herself on my neck, and said:
'I had not time to thank you then . . .'
'Ah, Mademoiselle Leontine . . . very, very glad to meet you.
I can just see before me your tear-stained face, your pouting lips-you looked awfully nice ; that does not mean that you don't look nice now.'
The little rogue looked at me with a smile, knowing that this was true.
'Didn't you catch cold then?'
'Not a bit.'
'In memory of your captivity, you ought, if you would be very, very kind . . .'
'Well, what? Soyez bref.'
'You ought to have supper with us.'
'With pleasure, rna parole, only not now.'
'Where shall I look for you then?'