winkles with
them and the couples at the tables become very gay, and sometimes
sentimental. And when the pink lights appear a small boy in blue
trousers comes along to light the street lamp. Then the urchins gather
on the wall which hedges in the garden on the fourth side of the
square and chatter, chatter, chatter, about all the things that French
boys chatter about. Naturally they have a good deal to say about the
people who are eating.

I have described the Cou-Cou as it was this night and as it has been
all the nights during the past eight summers that I have been there.
The dinner too is always the same. It is served _a la carte_, but one
is not given much choice. There is always a _potage_, always
_spaghetti_, always chicken and a salad, always a lobster, and
_zabaglione_ if one wants it. The wine--it is called _chianti_--is
tolerable. And the _addition_ is made upon a slate with a piece of
white chalk. "_Qu'est-ce que monsieur a mange?_" Sometimes it is very
difficult to remember, but it is necessary. Such honesty compels an
exertion. It is all added up and for the two of us on this evening, or
any other evening, it may come to nine _francs_, which is not much to
pay for a good dinner.

Then, on this evening, and every other evening, we went on, back as we
had come, round past the other side of Sacre-Coeur, past the statue of
the Chevalier who was martyred for refusing to salute a procession
(why he refused I have never found out, although I have asked
everybody who has ever dined with me at the Cou-Cou) to the Cafe
Savoyarde, the broad windows of which look out over pretty much all
the Northeast of Paris, over a glittering labyrinth of lights set in
an obscure sea of darkness. It was not far from here that Louise and
Julien kept house when they were interrupted by Louise's mother, and
it was looking down over these lights that they swore those eternal
vows, ending with Louise's "_C'est une Feerie!_" and Julien's "_Non,
c'est la vie!_" One always remembers these things and feels them at
the Savoyarde as keenly as one did sometime in the remote past
watching Mary Garden and Leon Beyle from the topmost gallery of the
Opera-Comique after an hour and a half wait in the _queue_ for one
_franc_ tickets (there were always people turned away from
performances of _Louise_ and so it was necessary to be there early;
some other operas did not demand such punctuality). There is a terrace
outside the Savoyarde, a tiny terra