[Illustration:0240] Near us a large door opened into the garden of the Moulin; it was filled with trees and benches and tables, and amidst the dark foliage glowed colored Chinese lanterns, which sifted a soft light upon the revellers assembled beneath them in the cool evening air. On one side of the garden stretched Paris far down and away, and on the other side blazed the Moulin de la Galette through the windows. A waltz was now being danced. Strange to say, it was the one dismal feature of the evening, and that was because the French do not know how to dance it, "reversing" being unknown. And there was an odd variety of ways in which the men held their partners and the dancers each other. Some grasped each other tightly about the waist with both arms, or similarly about the necks or shoulders, and looked straight into each other's face without a smile or an occasional word. It was all done in deadly earnest, as a serious work. It was in the quadrille that the fun came, when the girls varied the usual order by pointing their toes toward the chandeliers with a swish of white skirts that made the by- standers cry, "Encore, Marcelle!" The men, yearning for a share of the applause, cut up all sorts of antics and capers, using their arms and legs with incredible agility, making grotesque faces, and wearing hideous false noses and piratical moustaches. Securing a partner for a dance was the easiest thing possible. Any girl was eligible,--simply the asking, the assent, and away they went. Bishop's pencil kept moving rapidly as he caught fleeting notes of faces, dresses, attitudes--everything--for his unfinished piece at the studio. A number of promenaders, attracted by his sketching, stopped to watch him. That dance was now finished, and the dancers separated wherever they stopped, and turned away to seek their separate friends; there was no waste of time in escorting the girls to seats, for that is not fashionable at Montmartre. The girls came flocking about Bishop, curious over his work, and completely shut out his view. "Oh!" exclaimed one saucy petite blonde, "let me see my portrait! I saw you sketching me during the dance." "_Et moi,--moi aussi!_" cried the others, until Bishop, overwhelmed, surrendered his book for the inspection of bright, eager eyes. "Has not monsieur a cigarette?" archly asked a girl with a decided nez retroussé. "_Oui_," I answered, handing her a packet, from which with exquisite, unconscious daintiness she selected one. The whole bevy then made a similar request, and we were soon enveloped in a blue haze.