l ceremony, and if Bruant would not
let us off, could we resent it? And if the men of our party resented it
for us, and if Bruant resented their resentment, how would that improve
matters?

It was about as unpleasant a predicament as I have ever found myself in.
We talked it over, but could see no way out of it, and in our discomfort
kept urging the men to stay for just one more song and then just one
more, greatly to their amazement, for they were accustomed to not
wanting to go and having to beg us to stay. The evil moment, however,
could not be put off indefinitely, and, with our hearts in our boots, we
at last got up from the table. We might have spared ourselves our agony.
Bruant, with the instinct and intelligence of the Frenchman, realized
our embarrassment and I hope I am right in thinking he had his laugh
over us all to himself, so much more than a laugh did we owe him. For
what he did when we got to the door was to shake hands with us
ceremoniously, each in turn, to repeat his thanks for our visit and his
gratitude to the musician for her services, to take off his wide-brimmed
hat--the only time that night--and to bow us out into the darkness of
the _Boulevard Rochechouart_.

Following the example of Mademoiselle Miss in the story, unless it was
she who was following ours, we finished the evening which had begun at
the _Mirliton_ by eating supper at the _Rat Mort_. It was an experience
I cared less to repeat even than the visits to the _Casino de Paris_ and
the _Moulin Rouge_. As light and satisfying a supper could have been
eaten in many other places, late as was the hour. Neither wit nor art
entered into the entertainment as at the _Chat Noir_ and Bruant's. Vice
was at no trouble to disguise itself. On the contrary, it made rather a
cynical display, I thought, and cynicism in vice is never agreeable. I
give my impressions. I may be wrong. I have not forgotten that the
harmless portrait by Degas of Desboutin at the _Nouvelle Athenes_
scandalized all London in the Nineties. Everything depends on the point
of view.

Anyway, another adventure I liked better was still to come before that
long Paris night was at an end. It was so characteristic of Harland and
his joy in the humorous and the absurd that I do not quite see why he
did not let his Mademoiselle Miss share it. Outside the _Rat Mort_, in
the early hours of the next morning, we picked up an old-fashioned
one-horse, closed cab, built to hold two people,