"'Captain,' said I, interrupting him, 'we may possibly shut our eyes to any little irregularity which you have committed in taking these passengers on board in defiance or your agreement with us, if, on your part, you will contrive to arrange this little entertainment, this novel spectacle for us. Think it over. In our religion we can enter into an arrangement with Heaven itself—surely you can do as much with the bayaderes.' "My glowing account and my projected evening's entertainment made de Morin and Delange as excited as I was; but, of course, we could not do anything without the consent of Madame de Guéran, a consent which she was most graciously pleased to accord. She, however, declined to be present, not from any motives of prudery, but because, as she herself said, the presence of ladies generally acted as a restraint in the case of such exhibitions. She, nevertheless, instructed us to inform the bayaderes that the deck of the vessel was as free to them as to ourselves. "My arguments have prevailed with the Captain, and his passengers will dance for us to-night. I am off to see to the refreshments and the lights." CHAPTER XXI. "In order that you may thoroughly enter into the spirit of our little _fête_, my dear fellow, I must, in your behalf, remove some of the obscurity in which the bayaderes are shrouded. "In Europe the most ridiculous ideas prevail about these priestesses of the dance, obtained chiefly from the tales of conscientious, but easily imposed-upon travellers. As a matter of fact, they have scarcely set foot in India before they make known to the inhabitants their wishes to see the famous dancing girls who have for so long excited their curiosity. A so-called cicerone, whose sole occupation really consists in providing a supply of the spurious article, hastens to introduce to the notice of the unsophisticated European a few women passably pretty, and tolerably well-made, who give themselves out to be bayaderes with the same facility as with us a man announces himself as a landed proprietor or a contributor to the newspapers. "To the sound of a kind of tambourine and brazen cymbals, these ladies step forward, raise their arms in the air, indulge without any preface in a variety of those contortions of trunk and shoulders which are the fundamental principle of all Oriental dances, and cast on their patron glances which, they do their best to make appear ardent. He, on the contrary, quite insensible to all these manoeuvres, gets rid of his visitors as quickly as possible, and on his return to Europe, exclaims, 'Don't believe in the bayadere—she is a regular sell.' "The real fact is that he never had a glimpse of the genuine article, and it is quite a mistake to suppose that it is to be found in _cafés_ or hotels, or to imagine that a bayadere is to be had for the asking. Just as poets are born, and not made, so you must absolutely be born a bayadere or resign all pretensions to the title.