fitting background for the riot and drunkenness of a Bohemian picnic, and as good for nothing else; never crossed the threshold of a church, or held out her hand in an act of charity; lived for herself and her own pleasure; and had no more conscience than the butterflies, and less sense of duty than the birds. If Jack Chicot had any compunction about the manner in which he and his wife were living, and the way they spent their money, he did not give any expression to his qualms of conscience. It may be that he was restrained by a false sense of delicacy, and that he considered his wife had a right to do what she liked with her own. His own earnings were small, and intermittent--a water-colour sketch sold to the dealers, a dramatic criticism accepted by the director of a popular journal. Money that came so irregularly went as it came. ‘Jack comes to have sold a picture!’ cried the wife; ‘that great impostor of mine has taken it into his head to work. Let us go and dine at the “Red Mill.” Jack shall make the cost.’ And then it was but to whistle for a couple of light open carriages, which, in this city of pleasure, stand in every street, tempting the idler to excursionize; to call together the half-dozen chosen friends of the moment, and away to the favourite restaurant to order a private room and a little dinner, _bien soigné_, and one’s particular brand of champagne, and then, hey for a drive in the merry green wood, while the _marmitons_ are perspiring over their _casseroles_, and anon back to a noisy feast, eaten in the open air, perhaps, under the afternoon sunshine, for La Chicot has to be at her theatre before seven, since at eight all Bohemian Paris will be waiting, eager and open-mouthed, to see the dancer with wild eyes and floating hair come bounding on to the stage. La Chicot was growing more and more like a Thracian Mænad as time went on. Her dancing was more audacious, her gestures more electrical. There was a kind of inspiration in those wild movements, but it was the inspiration of a Bacchante, not the calm grace of dryad or sea-nymph. You could fancy her whirling round Pentheus, mixed with the savage throng of her sister Mænads, thirsting for vengeance and murder; a creature to be beheld from afar with wondering admiration, but a being to be shunned by all lovers of peaceful lives and tranquil paths. Those who knew her best used to speak pretty freely about her in the second year of her wedded life, and her third season at the Théâtre des Etudiants. ‘La Chicot begins to drink like a fish,’ said Antoine, of the orchestra, to Gilbert, who played the comic fathers. ‘I wonder whether she beats her husband when she has had too much champagne?’