grows late, the taverne becomes more and more animated.

Every one is talking and having a good time. The room is bewildering in
gay color, the hum of conversation is everywhere, and as there is a
corresponding row of tables across the low, narrow room, friendly
greetings and often conversations are kept up from one side to the
other. The dinner, as it progresses, assumes the air of a big family
party of good bohemians. The French do not bring their misery with them
to the table. To dine is to enjoy oneself to the utmost; in fact the
French people cover their disappointment, sadness, annoyances, great or
petty troubles, under a masque of "blague," and have such an innate
dislike of sympathy or ridicule that they avoid it by turning
everything into "blague."

This veneer is misleading, for at heart the French are sad. Not to speak
of their inmost feelings does not, on the other hand, prevent them at
times from being most confidential. Often, the merest exchange of
courtesies between those sharing the same compartment in a train, or a
seat on a "bus," seems to be a sufficient introduction for your neighbor
to tell you where he comes from, where he is going, whether he is
married or single, whom his daughter married, and what regiment his son
is in. These little confidences often end in his offering you half his
bottle of wine and extending to you his cigarettes.

[Illustration: LES BEAUX MAQUEREAUX]

If you have finished dinner, you go out on the terrace for your coffee.
The fakirs are passing up and down in front, selling their wares--little
rabbits, wonderfully lifelike, that can jump along your table and sit on
their hind legs, and wag their ears; toy snakes; small leaden pigs for
good luck; and novelties of every description. Here one sees women with
baskets of ecrivisse boiled scarlet; an acrobat tumbles on the
pavement, and two men and a girl, as a marine, a soldier, and a
vivandiere, in silvered faces and suits, pose in melodramatic attitudes.
The vivandiere is rescued alternately from a speedy death by the marine
and the soldier.

Presently a little old woman approaches, shriveled and smiling, in her
faded furbelows now in rags. She sings in a piping voice and executes
between the verses a tottering pas seul, her eyes ever smiling, as if
she still saw over the glare of the footlights, in the haze beyond, the
vast audience of by-gone days; smiling as if she still heard the big
orchestra and saw the leader with