We fell in line with many others at the ticket office, and paid the fifty centimes admission fee (ladies twenty-five centimes). We were relieved of our hats and canes by a stout old woman in the vestiaire, who claimed two sous from each. Following the up-hill passage of the entrance, the walls of which are painted with flowers and garden scenes, we entered the great ball-room. What a brilliant scene of life and light!--at first a blur of sound, light, and movement, then gradually resolving into the simple elements composing it. The floor was covered with dancers, and the girls were making a generous display of graceful anatomy. A large band at the farther end of the room, on an inclined stand, was the vortex of the din. The promenade encircling the hall was crowded with hatless laughing girls and smooth-faced boys wearing caps or flat-brimmed low-crowned hats; their trousers fitted tight at the knees, and their heads were closely cropped. These were strolling in groups, or watching the dancers, or sitting at the rows of wooden tables drinking. All within the vast hall had gone to enjoy their Sunday night as much as possible. To most of the girls this was the one night in the week when, not tired out from the drudgery of hard work, they could throw aside all cares and live in the way for which their cramped and meagre souls yearned. This is a rendezvous for the humble workers of the city, where they may dress as best they can, exchange their petites histoires, and abandon themselves to the luxury of the dance; for they are mostly shop-girls, and blanchisseuses, and the like, who, when work fails them, have to hover about the dark streets at night, that prosperous-looking passers-by may be tempted by the pleading of their dark saucy eyes, or be lured by them to some quiet spot where their lovers lie in wait with a lithe and competent black slung-shot. No mercy for the hapless bourgeois then! For the dear Henris and Jacques and Louises must have their sous for the comforts of life, as well as the necessities, and such luxuries as tobacco and drink must be considered; and if the money wherewith all this may be bought is not produced by Marcelle or Hélène or Marie, she will get a beating for her slothfulness or lack of skill, and will be driven into the street with a hurting back to try again. And so Henri, Jacques, or Louis basks in the sun, and smokes cigarettes with never a care, except that of making his devoted little mistress perform her duties, knowing well how to retain her affection by selfishness and brutality.