New England Review

Upon entering the restaurant the actresses remove their hats and wraps and make themselves perfectly at home. They are the life of Darblay’s; we couldn’t possibly spare them.

One of the actors is a great swell,—M. Fontaine, leading man at the Théâtre du Montparnasse, opposite. His salary is a hundred francs a week; this makes the smaller actors look up to him, and enables him to wear a very long coat, besides gloves, patent-leather shoes, and a shiny top-hat. He occupies the place of honor, and Marie smiles when she serves him, and gives him a good measure of wine. He rewards this attention by depositing two sous in the tip-box every Friday night. Then there are M. Marius, M. Zecca, and M. Dufauj who make people scream with laughter at the Gaieté, and M. Coppée, the heavy villain of the terrible eyes in “Les Deux Gosses,” and Mademoiselle Walzy, whose dark eyes sparkle mischief as she peeps over her glass, and Mademoiselle Minion, who kicks shockingly high to accentuate her songs, and eight other actresses just as saucy and pretty.

The students of the Quartier practically take charge of the theatres on Saturday nights, and as they are very free with their expressions of approval or disapproval, the faces of the stage-people wear an anxious look at the restaurant on that evening. The students will throw the whole theatre into an uproar with hisses that drive an actor off the stage, or applause, recalls, and the throwing of two-sous bouquets and kisses to an actress who has made a hit.

Promptly at six-forty-five every night the venerable M. Corneau enters Darblay’s, bringing a copy of Le Journal. He is extremely methodical, so that any interruption of his established routine upsets him badly. One evening he found a stranger in his seat, occupying the identical chair that had been sacred to his use every evening for six years. M. Corneau was so astonished that he hung his hat on the wrong hook, stepped on the cat’s tail, sulked in a corner, and refused to eat until his seat had been vacated, and then he looked as though he wished it could be fumigated. He has a very simple meal. One evening he invited me—a rare distinction—to his room, which was in the top floor of one of those quaint old buildings in the Rue du Moulin de Beurre. It could then be seen what a devoted scientist and student he was. His room was packed with books, chemicals, mineral specimens, and scientific instruments. He was very genial, and brewed excellent tea over an alcohol-stove of his own manufacture. Twenty years ago he was a professor at the École des Mines, where he had served many years; but he had now grown too old for that, and was living his quiet, studious, laborious life on a meagre pension. [End Page 179]

At one table sit a sculptor, an artist, and a blind musician and his wife. The sculptor is slender, delicate, and nervous, and is continually rolling and smoking cigarettes. His blond hair falls in ringlets over his collar, and he looks more the poet than the sculptor, for he is dreamy and distrait, and seems to be looking within himself rather than upon the world about him. Augustine serves him with an absinthe Pernod au sucre, which he slowly sips while he smokes several cigarettes before he is ready for his dinner.

The artist is his opposite,—a big, bluff, hearty fellow, loud of voice and full of life. And he is successful, for he has received a medal and several honorable mentions at the Salon des Champs-Élysées, and has a fine twilight effect in the Luxembourg Gallery. After dinner he and M. Darblay play piquet for the coffee, and M. Darblay is generally the loser.

The blind musician is a kindly old man with a benevolent face and a jovial spirit. He is the head professor of music at the Institution des Aveugles, on the Boulevard des Invalides. His...