[Sidenote: THE PROFESSIONAL DANCER AT THE GARDENS.] But the American youth who thought to have a bacchanalian orgie was terribly disappointed, for there is nothing bacchanalian about it. All he saw was the entire dancing platform occupied by waltzers, who waltzed just as everybody does in good society, nothing more or less. Only after each waltz comes the terribly immoral can-can, and the eyes of the young American, or English, man or woman glitter with expected enjoyment. Alas! they do not get it. The can-can is simply a quadrille danced by two or more couples; there is no prompter, no set figure as I could see, and nothing about it singular except the extravagant poses of the dancers. They advance and retreat, not with the dignified walk-through that the English speaking races affect, but more like Comanche Indians. The male being who dances, always with his hat on, will indulge in the most terrific leaps; he will twist his body into every possible shape that the human body is capable of, and will do more grotesque work than any pantomimist on any stage. He twirls, he twists, he leaps, he dances on one foot, and then on the other. He throws his body into the air in all sorts of shapes; he squats, he lolls his tongue out of his mouth, he makes play with his hat, he puts it back on his head, either at the back or over his eyes; he springs and knocks his feet together; all without system or design, but always in time with the music. It is not the poetry, it is the delirium tremens, of motion. It is such a dance as one might expect to see in a lunatic asylum containing only incurables. [Illustration: PROFESSIONALS IN A QUADRILLE AT THE MABILLE.] As an exhibition of absurd posturing, it is always a success; as a specimen of dancing, as we understand dancing, it is anything else. But for just once it is amusing. As between seeing it every night and serving an equal time in the penitentiary, I would unhesitatingly choose the penitentiary. The human body is a thing of joy when naturally carried, but you do not want too much of it in the can-can. The women are, it must be confessed, a trifle freer. They will kick a bystander's hat from his head, and in some of the movements there is a very free exhibition of leg; that is to say, if the leg be shapely. I noticed that the ladies whose general contour suggested pipe-stemmy support were as modest about their displays as though they had been nuns, and I fancied I could detect a shade of anguish pass over their faces as they observed the shapely proportions of their more favored sisters.