One dismal night, at a brilliant ball in a private mansion, a select company of both sexes, representatives of the world of rank and fashion, were enjoying themselves to their hearts’ content, while their chauffeurs watched and waited outside in the cold, dark streets, chewing the cud of bitter reflections.  Between the hours of three and four in the morning the latter held an open-air meeting, and adopted a resolution which they carried out forthwith.  A delegation was sent upstairs to give notice to the light-hearted guests that they must be down in their respective motors within ten minutes on pain of not finding any conveyances to take them home.  The mutineers were nearly all private chauffeurs in the employ of the personages to whom they sent this indelicate ultimatum.  The resourceful host, however, warded off the danger and placated the rebellious drivers by inviting them to an improvised little banquet of pates de foie gras, dry champagne, and other delicacies.  The general temper of the proletariat remained unchanged.  Tales of rebellion still more disquieting were current in Paris, which, whether true or false, were aids to a correct diagnosis of the situation.

A dancing mania broke out during the armistice, which was not confined to the French capital.  In Berlin, Rome, London, it aroused the indignation of those whose sympathy with the spiritual life of their respective nations was still a living force.  It would seem, however, to be the natural reaction produced by a tremendous national calamity, under which the mainspring of the collective mind temporarily gives way and the psychical equilibrium is upset.  Disillusion, despondency, and contempt for the passions that lately stirred them drive the people to seek relief in the distractions of pleasures, among which dancing is perhaps one of the mildest.  It was so in Paris at the close of the long period of stress which ended with the rise of Napoleon.  Dancing then went on uninterruptedly despite national calamities and private hardships.  “Luxury,” said Victor Hugo, “is a necessity of great states and great civilizations, but there are moments when it must not be exhibited to the masses.”  There was never a conjuncture when the danger of such an exhibition was greater or more imminent than during the armistice on the Continent—­for it was the period of incubation preceding the outbreak of the most malignant social disease to which civilized communities are subject.

The festivities and amusements in the higher circles of Paris recall the glowing descriptions of the fret and fever of existence in the Austrian capital during the historic Vienna Congress a hundred years ago.  Dancing became epidemic and shameless.  In some salons the forms it took were repellent.  One of my friends, the Marquis X., invited to a dance at the house of a plutocrat, was so shocked by what he saw there that he left almost at once in disgust.  Madame Machin, the favorite teacher of the choreographic art, gave lessons in the new modes of dancing, and her fee was three hundred francs a lesson.  In a few weeks she netted, it is said, over one hundred thousand francs.