peppers.
When at last they came out into the narrow street, and thence to the
thronged Boulevard des Italiens, it was nearly eleven o'clock. They
stood for a little time in the shelter of a kiosk, looking down the
boulevard to where the Place de l'Opera opened wide and the lights of
the Cafe de la Paix shone garish in the night. And Ste. Marie said:

"There's a street fete in Montmartre. We might drive home that way."

"An excellent idea," said the other man. "The fact that Montmartre lies
in an opposite direction from home makes the plan all the better. And
after that we might drive home through the Bois. That's much farther in
the wrong direction. Lead on!"

So they sprang into a waiting fiacre, and were dragged up the steep,
stone-paved hill to the heights, where La Boheme still reigns, though
the glory of Moulin Rouge has departed and the trail of the tourist is
over all. They found Montmartre very much en fete. In the Place Blanche
were two of the enormous and brilliantly lighted merry-go-rounds, which
only Paris knows--one furnished with stolid cattle, theatrical-looking
horses, and Russian sleighs; the other with the ever-popular galloping
pigs. When these dreadful machines were in rotation, mechanical organs,
concealed somewhere in their bowels, emitted hideous brays and shrieks
which mingled with the shrieks of the ladies mounted upon the galloping
pigs, and together insulted a peaceful sky.

The square was filled with that extremely heterogeneous throng which the
Parisian street fete gathers together, but it was, for the most part, a
well-dressed throng, largely recruited from the boulevards, and it was
quite determined to have a very good time in the cheerful, harmless
Latin fashion. The two men got down from their fiacre and elbowed a way
through the good-natured crowd to a place near the more popular of the
merry-go-rounds. The machine was in rotation. Its garish lights shone
and glittered, its hidden mechanical organ blared a German waltz tune,
the huge, pink-varnished pigs galloped gravely up and down as the
platform upon which they were mounted whirled round and round. A little
group of American trippers, sight-seeing with a guide, stood near by,
and one of the group, a pretty girl with red hair, demanded plaintively
of the friend upon whose arm she hung: "Do you think momma would be
shocked if we took a ride? Wouldn't I love to!"

Hartley turned, laughing, from this distressed maiden to Ste. Marie.