Dodo made his début at the Moulin Rouge at eight o'clock on the evening of his first day in Paris. Despite appearances, this did not mean that he was wholly a fool. One must remember that it was the evening of the first day. He walked leagues, it seemed to him, around the crowded promenade, half stifled by an atmosphere composed of equal parts of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and cheap perfumery. He watched a quadrille made up of shrill shrieks, rouge, and an abundance of white lace. He tossed balls into numbered holes in a long board, and won a variety of prizes of pseudo-Japanese make, which he immediately presented to the exponents of the aforesaid quadrille. He squandered a louis in firing a rifle at paper rabbits passing in monotonous succession over three feet of sickly green hillside. He bought a citronade for a girl with blue eyes, and a menthe glaciale for another with brown; and, at the end, rebuffing the proffered services of a guide, who, by reason of his new tan overcoat, and to his intense disgust, addressed him in English, he returned to the Hôtel du Rhin in a state of profound despondency. But that, as we have said, was on his first evening. On the third, he had engaged a table in advance at Maxim's, and supped in state on caviar, langouste à l'Américaine, and Ruinart. _And_ with Antoinette Féria. It was not much of an achievement, but it showed progress. On the following day Dodo went to Auteuil, won twelve francs fifty on a ten-franc bet, and dined at Armenonville. It was here that Suzanne Derval looked cross-eyed at him, fingered her pearls, and remarked that he had beaux yeux. Dodo might be said to be fairly launched. It would be superfluous to note the further stages of his initiation. They were strictly conventional, and, under the circumstances, it was remarkable that, at the end of six weeks, he had drawn but seven thousand francs on his letter of credit, and still retained his enthusiasms. It is not every one from the provinces for whom Paris reserves her supreme surprise for the forty-third day. It chanced to be the first evening of the de Trémonceau's annual engagement at the Folies-Bergère, and for three days the eloquent legend "La Belle Thaïs" had been glaring at the boulevard throngs in huge block letters from the posters on the colonnes Morris. Dodo, meanwhile, had made many friends among men of tastes similar to his own--a feat which is curiously easy of accomplishment in Paris, when one has forty-odd thousand francs and a desire for company. Of these was Sacha Vitzoff, who, on occasion, had five louis, and invariably spent them at once upon his friends, before he should be tempted to put them to a worse use.