as in an oven. But, very well, then, it is always funny there.”
And they turned on their heels to make their way to the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre.
The lit-up front of the establishment threw a bright light into the four streets which met in front of it. A string of cabs were waiting for the close of the performance.
Forestier was walking in when Duroy checked him.
“You are passing the pay-box,” said he.
“I never pay,” was the reply, in a tone of importance.
When he approached the check-takers they bowed, and one of them held out his hand. The journalist asked: “Have you a good box?”
“Certainly, Monsieur Forestier.”
He took the ticket held out to him, pushed the padded door with its leather borders, and they found themselves in the auditorium.
Tobacco smoke slightly veiled like a faint mist the stage and the further side of the theater. Rising incessantly in thin white spirals from the cigars and pipes, this light fog ascended to the ceiling, and there, accumulating, formed under the dome above the crowded gallery a cloudy sky.
In the broad corridor leading to the circular promenade a group of women were awaiting newcomers in front of one of the bars, at which sat enthroned three painted and faded vendors of love and liquor.
The tall mirrors behind them reflected their backs and the faces of passersby.
Forestier pushed his way through the groups, advancing quickly with the air of a man entitled to consideration.
He went up to a box-keeper. “Box seventeen,” said he.
“This way, sir.”
And they were shut up in a little open box draped with red, and holding four chairs of the same color, so near to one another that one could scarcely slip between them. The two friends sat down. To the right, as to the left, following a long curved line, the two ends of which joined the proscenium, a row of similar cribs held people seated in like fashion, with only their heads and chests visible.
On the stage, three young fellows in fleshings, one tall, one of middle size, and one small, were executing feats in turn upon a trapeze.
The tall one first advanced with short, quick steps, smiling and waving his hand as though wafting a kiss.
The muscles of his arms and legs stood out under his tights. He expanded his chest to take off the effect of his too prominent stomach, and his face resembled that of a barber’s block, for a careful parting divided his locks equally on the center of the skull. He gained the trapeze by a graceful bound, and, hanging by the hands, whirled round it like a wheel at full speed, or, with stiff arms and straightened body, held himself out horizontally in space.
Then he jumped down, saluted the audience again with a smile amidst the applause of the stalls, and went and leaned against the scenery, showing off the muscles of his legs at every step.
The second, shorter and more squarely built, advanced in turn, and went through the same performance, which the third also recommenced amidst most marked expressions of approval from the public.
But Duroy scarcely noticed the performance, and, with head averted, kept his eyes on the promenade behind him, full of men and prostitutes.
Said Forestier to him: “Look at the stalls; nothing but middle-class folk with their wives and children, good noodlepates who come to see the show. In the boxes, men about town, some artistes, some girls, good second-raters; and behind us, the strangest mixture in Paris. Who are these men? Watch them. There is something of everything, of every profession, and every caste; but blackguardism predominates. There are clerks of all kinds — bankers’ clerks, government clerks, shopmen, reporters, ponces, officers in plain clothes, swells in evening dress, who have dined out, and have dropped in here on their way from the Opera to the Théatre des Italiens; and then again, too, quite a crowd of suspicious folk who defy analysis. As to the women, only one type, the girl who sups at the American café, the girl at one or two louis who looks out for foreigners at five louis, and lets her regular customers know when she is disengaged. We have known them for the last ten years; we see them every evening all the year round in the same places, except when they are making a hygienic sojourn at Saint Lazare or at Lourcine.”
Duroy no longer heard him. One of these women was leaning against their box and looking at him. She was a stout brunette, her skin whitened with paint, her black eyes lengthened at the corners with pencil and shaded by enormous and artificial eyebrows. Her too exuberant bosom stretched the dark silk of her dress almost to bursting; and her painted lips, red as a fresh wound, gave her an aspect bestial, ardent, unnatural, but which, nevertheless, aroused desire.
She beckoned with her head one of the friends who was passing, a blonde with red hair, and stout, like herself, and said to her, in a voice loud enough to be heard: “There is a pretty fellow; if he would like to have me for ten louis I should not say no.”
Forestier turned and tapped Duroy on the knee, with a smile. “That is meant for you; you are a success, my dear fellow. I congratulate you.”
The ex-sub-officer blushed, and mechanically fingered the two pieces of gold in his waistcoat pocket.
The curtain had dropped, and the orchestra was now playing a waltz.
Duroy said: “Suppose we take a turn round the promenade.”
“Just as you like.”
They left their box, and were at once swept away by the throng of promenaders. Pushed, pressed, squeezed, shaken, they went on, having before their eyes a crowd of hats. The girls, in pairs, passed amidst this crowd of men, traversing it with facility, gliding between elbows, chests, and backs as if quite at home, perfectly at their ease, like fish in water, amidst this masculine flood.
Duroy, charmed, let himself be swept along, drinking in with intoxication the air vitiated by tobacco, the odor of humanity, and the perfumes of the hussies. But Forestier sweated, puffed, and coughed.
“Let us go into the garden,” said he.
And turning to the left, they entered a kind of covered garden, cooled by two large and ugly fountains. Men and women were drinking at zinc tables placed beneath evergreen trees growing in boxes.
“Another bock, eh?” said Forestier.
“Willingly.”
They sat down and watched the passing throng.
From time to time a woman would stop and ask, with stereotyped smile: “Are you going to stand me anything?”
And as Forestier answered: “A glass of water from the fountain,” she would turn away, muttering: “Go on, you duffer.”
But the stout brunette, who had been leaning, just before, against the box occupied by the two comrades, reappeared, walking proudly arm-in-arm with the stout blonde. They were really a fine pair of women, well matched.
She smiled on perceiving Duroy, as though their eyes had already told secrets, and, taking a chair, sat down quietly in face of him, and making her friend sit down, too, gave the
