ht, caused
themselves to be treated, in the meantime; and in the free space between
the tables, the ordinary local public predominated a whole regiment of
boatmen, _Rowkickersup_, with their companions in short flannel
petticoats.

One of them carried on at the piano and appeared to play with his feet
as well as his hands; four couples bounded through a quadrille, and some
young men watched them, polished and correct, who would have looked
proper, if in spite of all, vice itself had appeared.

For there, one tastes in full all the pomp and vanity of the world, all
its well bred debauchery, all the seamy side of Parisian society; a
mixture of counter-jumpers, of strolling players, of the lowest
journalists, of gentlemen in tutelage, of rotten stock-jobbers, of
ill-famed debauchees, of used-up old, fast men; a doubtful crowd of
suspicious characters, half-known, half gone under, half-recognized,
half-cut, pickpockets, rogues, procurers of women, sharpers with
dignified manners, and a bragging air, which seems to say: "I shall
rend the first who treats me as a scoundrel."

This place reeks of folly, stinks of the scum and the gallantry of the
shops. Male and female there give themselves airs. There dwells an odor
of love, and there one fights for a yes, or for a no, in order to sustain
a worm-eaten reputation, which a stroke of the sword or a pistol bullet
would destroy further.

Some of the neighboring inhabitants looked in out of curiosity every
Sunday; some young men, very young, appeared there every year to learn
how to live, some promenaders lounging about showed themselves there;
some greenhorns wandered thither. It is with good reason named La
Grenonillere. At the side of the covered wharf where they drank, and
quite close to the Flower Pot, people bathed. Those among the women
who possessed the requisite roundness of form came there to display their
wares naked and to make clients. The rest, scornful, although well filled
out with wadding, shored up with springs, corrected here and altered
there, watched their sisters dabbling with disdain.

The swimmers crowded on to a little platform to dive thence head
foremost. They are either straight like vine poles, or round like
pumpkins, gnarled like olive branches, they are bowed over in front,
or thrown backwards by the size of their stomachs and are invariably
ugly, they leap into the water which splashes almost over the drinkers
in the cafe.

Notwithstanding th