To the average home-staying Briton of the period, Paris meant Montmartre, and Montmartre meant the Cancan. Even to-day the word conjures up a vision of the old Moulin Rouge, with its sinister, winking lights, its crude sensationalism, its wild fandango of forced hilarity. In this hot-house atmosphere of feverish yet mirthless gaiety, the dance forgot its ancient origin in hushed forest glades and laughing vineyards, forgot its long sojourn in dignified courts, forgot its strict discipline in the academies; it became little more than an appetiser to the feast of debauch. But among the mob of flamboyant bacchanales for whom the dance was merely a means by which they could display their wares to the market, there were one or two dancers with a distinct personality, who gave the _école montmartroise_ the vitality, if not the dignity, of a kind of art. The chief of these were La Goulue, Grille d’Égout and Nini Patte-en-l’air. In her private _dossier_ La Goulue was known to the State as Louise Weber. She is said to have earned her soubriquet by her gluttony as a child. Doubtless she had the excuse of the stimulus of hunger, for she was the daughter of poor working-class people. [Illustration: CONNIE GILCHRIST (THE GOLD GIRL) _From a painting by Whistler_] She had, however, all the impertinent charm of the _petite Parisienne_. And, moreover, she had a passion for her métier. Small, fair, intriguing, with delicately rounded limbs, ivory shoulders and a mutinous little head crowned with light gold hair, she startled Paris by her dancing at the Elysée Montmartre. To the abandon of the Cancan she added in her rendering of it novel effects of an audacity that won her immediate fame. She was to the eighties what Mogador and Rose Ponpon were to the sixties. She became a person of note and the spoilt child of the _jeunesse dorée_. The story is told of how she was invited to supper at the Maison d’Or--she was an astonishingly vulgar little being in those days--by a Russian prince. A well-meaning friend, wishing to give her a genial hint to be on her best behaviour, wrote her a note, which was handed to her on a salver by the _mâitre d’hôtel_. She opened it, and with some difficulty spelled out the advice, to the amusement of her host: “Speak very nicely to the Grand-Duke in order to strengthen the Franco-Russian alliance!”