Chapter XV

Symptoms of the Disease

The majority of these all-night places in Paris are singularly and monotonously alike.  In the early hours of the evening the musicians rest from their labors; the regular habitues lay aside their air of professional abandon; with true French frugality the lights burn dim and low.  But anon sounds the signal from the front of the house.  Strike up the band; here comes a sucker!  Somebody resembling ready money has arrived.  The lights flash on, the can-canners take the floor, the garcons flit hither and yon, and all is excitement.

Enter the opulent American gentleman.  Half a dozen functionaries greet him rapturously, bowing before his triumphant progress.  Others relieve him of his hat and his coat, so that he cannot escape prematurely.  A whole reception committee escorts him to a place of honor facing the dancing arena.  The natives of the quarter stand in rows in the background, drinking beer or nothing at all; but the distinguished stranger sits at a front table and is served with champagne, and champagne only.  It is inferior champagne; but because it is labeled American Brut—­what ever that may denote—­and because there is a poster on the bottle showing the American flag in the correct colors, he pays several times its proper value for it.  From far corners and remote recesses coryphees and court jesters swarm forth to fawn on him, bask in his presence, glory in his smile—­and sell him something.  The whole thing is as mercenary as passing the hat.  Cigarette girls, flower girls and bonbon girls, postcard venders and confetti dispensers surround him impenetrably, taking him front, rear, by the right flank and the left; and they shove their wares in his face and will not take No for an answer; but they will take anything else.

Two years ago at a hunting camp in North Carolina, I thought I had met the creature with the most acute sense of hearing of any living thing.  I refer to Pearl, the mare.  Pearl was an elderly mare, white in color and therefore known as Pearl.  She was most gentle and kind.  She was a reliable family animal too—­had a colt every year—­but in her affiliations she was a pronounced reactionary.  She went through life listening for somebody to say Whoa!  Her ears were permanently slanted backward on that very account.  She belonged to the Whoa Lodge, which has a large membership among humans.

Riding behind Pearl you uttered the talismanic word in the thinnest thread of a whisper and instantly she stopped.  You could spell Whoa! on your fingers, and she would stop.  You could take a pencil and a piece of paperout of your pocket and write down Whoa!—­and she would stop; but, compared with a sample assortment of these cabaret satellites, Pearl would have seemed deaf as a post.  Clear across a hundred-foot dance-hall they catch the sound of a restless dollar turning over in the fob pocket of an American tourist.