NIGHT LIFE OF PARIS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 176, 27 July 1907, Page 2

NIGHT LIFE OF PARIS.

NOT EXCITING OR AMUSING

Paris goes to bed early, says a German newspaper writer, who has been •making a study of its night life. For the few who sit up-^a handful of foolish and dissipated., .persons, and some sightseeing strangers—-there is little excitement and still less real amusement. From 10 o'clock or so, when the generaFcrowd deserts the cafes for home and bed, down to midnight the streets are dreary and almost deserted. Then there is a brief renewal of life as the theatres are turned out. At one cafe to which after-theatre crowds resort soft boiled eggs, roll, and chocolate are a specialty. The chocolate is what a great majority of all the visitors to all cafes want. The aftertheatre supper is the exception in Paris. HOT CHOCOLATE IS THE RULE. The Parisian drinks it as hot and as fast as possible. The women do not remove their wraps nor the men their overcoats. The whole proceeding is summary. They are in a hurry to get home. For the vast majority even of pleasure-seekers the Paris night is all over at 2 a.m. ' ' As for the foolish people who insist qn sitting up they all drift out to Montmartre, with its traditions, real and imaginary, of revels in which artists and their models took part, supplying their own entertainment m singing, playing, and declaiming poetry. Whatever may have happened in the old times, there is nothing now that is not commonplace. NIGHIf BROWLERS. All the principal cabarets of Montmartre have become mere variety theatres, and close up sharp at midnight like the other houses. But there are a few houses which cater to tho night prowlers. In some of them late supper is served to people in evening clothes, while a gipsy orchestra plays, and more or less genuine negresses, Egyptian and Spanish women, perform more or. less: authentic national dances. In all these places the doors are locked and the blinds are drawn. From the street they seem dead. One has to know his Paris more or less to get into them. .:,.i. There are shady nighthawk guides who make a specialty of steering the stranger who wants to see the shady side of Paris life. This aspect of it stretches out to perhaps four a.m., and then the cabmen, who make this trade a specialty, reap a harvest, taking the belated to all parts of Paris. THE EARLY MARKET. There is a way by which slumming parties can stretch out the night a couple of hours more. It is chiefly resorted to by strangers who want to see Paris all the way round the clock. When the Montmartre cabarets go to sleep, such parties make their way to the markets, where the next day's food and drink for the city is coming in from all parts of France and starting off again for every quarter of Paris. This is a bustling, busy scene worth seeing. It is as novel and thrifty as the Montmartre ones are loose and wanton. But it is not without its dangers. ; . The murky marketman and the shrewdish woman rather resent being stared at by men in clawhammer coats and women in frills and furbelows. Many a stovepipe hat is wrecked by contact with the crate of some jostling porter s shoulder. Sometimes ah unpleasant egg lands qn an immaculate shirt front, and cabbage stalks and unsaleable portions of fish are sometimes hurled by the market women at the finery of the visiting ladies. However, night visits to the market are so common that some of the httle eating-houses of the neighbourhood have become famous for their homely but tasty dishes. One makes a specialty of shellfish, another of calves' feet in jelly, anoother of tripe and onions a la mode de Caen. They also . affect eccentric 1 names and furnish musical entertainments, and the German observer thought it worth the loss of his night's rest to see four detectives in frock coats and tall hats walk into one of