You will see on that night, and only on that night, all of the most celebrated women of Paris racing with linked arms about the asphalt pavement which circles around the band-stand. It is for them their one night of freedom in public, when they are permitted to conduct themselves as do their less prosperous sisters, when, instead of reclining in a victoria in the Bois, with eyes demurely fixed ahead of them, they can throw off restraint and mix with all the men of Paris, and show their diamonds, and romp and dance and chaff and laugh as they did when they were not so famous. The French swells who are their escorts have cut down Chinese lanterns with their sticks, and stuck the candles inside of them on the top of their high hats with the burning tallow, and made living torches of themselves. So on they go, racing by--first a youth in evening dress, dripping with candle-grease, and then a beautiful girl in a dinner gown, with her silk and velvet opera cloak slipping from her shoulders--all singing to the music of the band, sweeping the people before them, or closing in a circle around some stately dignitary, and waltzing furiously past him to prevent his escape. Sometimes one party will storm the band-stand and seize the musicians' instruments, while another invades the stage of the little theatre, or overpowers the women in charge of the shooting-gallery, or institutes a hurdle-race over the iron tables and the wicker chairs. [Illustration: INTERESTED IN THE WINNER] Or you will see ambassadors and men of title from the Jockey Club jostling cockney bookmakers and English lords to look at a little girl in a linen blouse and a flat straw hat, who is dancing in the same circle of shining shirt-fronts _vis-à-vis_ to the most-talked-of young person in Paris, who wears diamonds in ropes, and who rode herself into notoriety by winning a steeplechase against a field of French officers. The first is a hired dancer, who will kick off some gentleman's hat when she wants it, and pass it round for money, and the other is the companion of princes, and has probably never been permitted to enter the Jardin de Paris before; but they are both of the same class, and when the music stops for a moment they approach each other smiling, each on her guard against possible condescension or familiarity; and the hired dancer, who is as famous in her way as the young girl with the ropes of diamonds is in hers, compliments madame on her dancing, and madame calls the other "mademoiselle," and says, "How very warm it is!" and the circle of men around them, who are leaning on each other's shoulders and standing on benches and tables to look, smile delightedly at the spectacle. They consider it very _chic_, this combination. It is like a meeting between Madame Bernhardt and Yvette Guilbert.