e found in one of the back
streets near the Boulevard St. Martin. Some of the cafes chantants are
patronized by the well-dressed class, and a blousard is no more likely
to be seen in their orchestra fauteuils than in the same division of
the regular theatres. The El Dorado, for example, in the Boulevard
Strasbourg, is as large and almost as elegant as Booth's Theatre in
New York, but it is a cafe chantant. Keeping still to the favorite
haunts of the blousard, we enter the showiest of the cafes chantants
peculiar to him--as free-and-easy a _beuglant_ as one could wish.
Beuglant, by the way, is the argot name of this sort of place; and as
the word comes from _beugler_, to "bellow," it may easily be seen how
flattering it is as a definite noun for a place where the chief
attraction is the singing.

It is late when we enter the beuglant, and the place is crowded to
suffocation and thick with tobacco smoke. The hall is an immensely
large one, with gleaming chandeliers, frescoed nymphs and cupids on
the walls, a regular stage and a regular orchestra. A venerable man in
gray hair and spectacles saws away at the big bass; a long-haired,
professor-looking person struggles laboriously with the piano; there
are two violinists, a horn, a trombone, a flute and a flageolet. On
the wall is a placard where we read that the price for the first
_consommation_ is fifteen sous, but that subsequent consommations will
be furnished at the ordinary price. Consommation is the convenient
word of cafes chantants for food or drink of any kind, and every
visitor is forced by the rules of the place to "consume" something as
his title to a seat. Nothing is furnished more nearly approaching food
than brandied cherries, but the drinks include all the noxious and
innoxious beverages known to the French--from coffee, sugar-water or
tea to brandy, rum and absinthe. In the list of the stronger drinks, a
compound of sugar, lemon, hot water and whisky (which I believe I have
heard mentioned under the name of punch in remote towns of Arkansas
and Minnesota) is here known as "an American." The first time one
hears the order, "Bring me an American, waiter, and let him be hot,
mind you--as hot as one can swallow him," it is a little surprising.

Waiters move laboriously about among the legs of the audience, bearing
salvers laden with wine, beer, Americans and bottles of water. The
audience is rough and ready; hats and caps are worn habitually; pipes
are dilige