unders of the storm king are as a sonata against
the staggering artillery of approbation when Pharnel of the Montparnasse
sings "_C'est pas difficile_"; the howlings of the north wind are as
zephyrs against the din of eulogy when Marius Reybas of the Bobino lifts
a mighty larynx in "Mahi Mahi." Great talent? Well, maybe not. But show
me a group of vaudevillians and acrobats who, like this group at the
Gaite, can amuse one night with risque ballad and somersault and the
next with Moliere--and not be shot dead on the spot!

Leave behind you Fysher's, where the smirking monsieur fills the red
upholstery with big-spending American hinds by warbling into their
liquored bodies cocoa butter ballades of love and passion, and come over
to the untufted Maillol's. And hear Maillol sing for the price of a
beer. Maillol's lyrics are not for the American virgin: but, at that,
they sing laughter in place of Fysher lech. Leave behind you Paillard's,
vainglorious in its bastard salades Danicheff, its souffles Javanaise;
leave the blatant Boulevard des Italiens for the timid _bistrop_ of
Monsieur Delmas in the scrawny Rue Huygens, with its _soupe aux legumes_
at twenty centimes the bowl, its _cotelette de veau_ at fifty the plate.
A queer oasis, this, with old Delmas's dog suffering from the St. Vitus
and quivering against the tables as you eat; with its marked napkins in
a rack, like the shaving cups in a rural barber shop, one napkin a week
to each regular patron. Avaunt, ye gauds of Americanized Paris. Here are
poor and starving artists come to dine aristocratically on seventy-five
centimes--fifteen cents. Here are no gapings of Cook's; here no Broadway
prowlers. A dank hole, yes, but in its cracked plaster the sense of
Romany sunsets of yonder times. Leave behind the dazzling dance places
of theatrical Montmartre, American, and come back of the wine shop in
the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve! Leave behind the turning mill
wheel, American, and come into the Avenue de Choisy, where over a
preglacial store a couple of cornets baffle the night and set a hundred
feet in motion, feet from the Gobelin quarter, feet from the
Butte-aux-Cailles! More leathery feet, to be sure, than the suede feet
of the Ziegfeld Montmartre, but kicking up a different wax dust, the wax
dust of a different Paris.

* * * * *

It is springtime in Paris! It is night in the Paris of a thousand
memories. Can you, now remote in th