with his head and arms than with his legs; and how earnestly he does bend to his work!  He is one incessant teeter.  While the music sounds he never flags.  He spins, he whirls, he balances:  he stands upon the toes of his wooden sabots and pirouettes with clumsy ease, like one on stilts.  He claps his hands smartly together, flings them wildly above his head, and pounds away with his feet as if it were his firm intention to go through into the cellar.  But, though our attention is centred on him, he is by no means alone or peculiar.  Around and around whirl others and others, under the gleaming chandeliers, in the clouds of tobacco smoke, dancing as vigorously, flinging their hands above their heads as wildly, as he.  Here and there handsome costumes are seen, but the majority are in Cardigan jackets or blouses:  many are in their shirt-sleeves.  All wear their hats and caps.  Women in male attire and men in women’s frocks and ribbons are a favorite form of disguise:  occasionally there is one of an elaborately grotesque character.  The spectators, sitting at the tables or strolling down the narrow aisles, look on with applause and laughter at the boisterous scene.  Occasionally one jumps upon a table and flings up his arms with a hilarious yell, but he is promptly tumbled down again.  When the quadrille is over many of the dancers go on jumping and skipping, loath to have done; but the floor is promptly cleared by two men in authority, the proprietors of the place, for there is rigid discipline here.

In the interval, while the music is silent, three or four policemen armed to the teeth, with swords at their sides and glittering uniforms, saunter in an idle, unconcerned manner up and down the cleared floor, with the air of men who have no earthly use for their time, and are walking thus merely to stretch their legs a bit.  But they are keenly on the alert, these gendarmes.  They cast their eyes on us where we sit with a sidelong glance which seems to say, “We see you, you two men in tall hats,” for we presently find we are conspicuous in this crowd by the hats we wear.  A ragamuffin Pierrot in a white nightcap is seen to touch a trousered female on the arm and look leeringly at us, and is overheard to say, “Vois donc, Delphine, those aristos there—­have they hats?—­quoi?” Whereupon I nod good-naturedly to them, and Delphine comes up to us with a smile.  “One sees easily thou art not Parisian, little father (p’tit pere)” she says to me.  “Rest tranquil, then—­thou shalt see dancing—­rest tranquil.”  And with a flirt of her heel she bounds into the middle of the floor with her cavalier as the orchestra sounds the preliminary strain of a waltz.