Neuilly is the evening fair. It opens in the heart of summer, [p054] in the full tide of that excessive heat which renders the drawing-room and theatre equally unbearable to those Parisians who wait for the month of August before they go to the sea, and who live in tea-gowns, fan in hand, sipping ices and lemons, behind their closed Venetian shutters. Like passengers in the tropics, who watch for the setting sun before they go on deck, these pretty women reclining in their bamboo chairs, impatiently follow the course of the clock-hands, so slowly travelling towards five o’clock. At that hour they get up, and in the semi-light of the dressing-room, with lowered blinds and wide-open windows, they leisurely array themselves in fresh and scented toilettes. They are going to dine in the open air, on the terrace of some restaurant in the Bois. Capes and mantles are too heavy during this month, and a young woman can go out without any wrap hiding her charming dress; she only carries a small shawl and one of those parasols, which, itself brilliant as a flower, enhances the effect of the whole toilette and, whilst intercepting the sun’s rays, throws most becoming shadows on the face. Then about six o’clock, at the doors of the Ministries and all along the Quai d’Orsay, a line of light, open carriages may be seen, in which young women have come to fetch husband or lover, soothing their impatience for the hour of freedom by noting the admiring glances of the passers-by. And when at last the lingerers appear in grey hat, white waistcoat, short coat and smart buttonhole, the couples lounging back in their carriages, drive through the Avenue des Champs Elysées, towards the summer restaurants and the shade of the Bois. The Pavillon d’Armenonville reaps the greatest [p055] advantages from the vicinity of the fair. The orchestra of the Tzigane Rigo, hidden in the gardens of the pavillon, first attracts the notice of the passers-by; they draw near, lean over the hedge, and look in to see if any one is seated at the little tables. [Illustration] “See, there is so-and-so, and so-and-so, C——— and B———.” Political and literary men, artists, financiers, women of both worlds, the recognized and the unrecognized, the Luxembourg, the Palais Bourbon, the theatre, the newspapers, the drawing-room, and boudoirs. The guests seat themselves under the verandah, to watch the carriages drive up. The table-napkins are dazzling in their snowy whiteness against the green leafy trees, the ice melts in the silver bowls, and the freshly cut cucumbers resemble aquatic leaves, torn from the pond of [p056] water lilies, which we only glimpse at through the hanging branches of the willows. Hours pass pleasantly, languidly, in this festive scene. The Rakoczy March, the Stephanie Gavotte, give a tinge of gallantry and love to the reverie into which we fall, daydreams vague as the outlines of the landscape before us.