CUP AND BALL GRAZE IN PARIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13497, 25 May 1907, Page 5 (Supplement)

CUP AND BALL GRAZE IN PARIS.

Paris is developing a bilboquet craze. Bilboquet is cup and balls, a childish game not unknown in England. It has always found still more favour in France, and there not only schoolboys alone, but grown-up men and women, serious and exalted personages, play it.. -*••.:-■' . There is a bilboquet. academy in Paris, and it is from it that the renewed interest, in the game radiates. Edmond Poineau is the proprietor. Cup and ball has been the passion of his life. - • . ... . He is a.retired cafe waiter and a cafe owner, himself. When he formed the project of his academy he drilled his. wife- in the game until she could catch- all varieties of freak balls in all sorts of cups. - >• Then he introduced the patrons of his cafe to the pastime, and when he saw how they took it he went ahead and opened his school. Poineau's idea was too good to be monopolised. .A rival was soon started. He doesn't call his place an academy. It is only a " salle de bilboquet." The rival one is Gaillaid. He is an expert player, and enthusiasts:. are trying to get up a match between him and Poineau. Both Gaillard's place and Poineau's 'are constantly thronged with players. Men and women may bo seen playing in public elsewhere, and an outfit has become an important: feature of many homes, while the toy and fancy stores do a lively trade in bilboquets. As for the hold that the game has on the French mind, readers of Dumas will remember that in "Chicot the Jester," King Henry 111. is represented as playing cup and ball with his three favourites and the! Court jester, Chicot. Louis XIV. disliked the game; he considered it vulgar; but one of the gentlemen of the Court, the Marquis de Bievre, was so expert that he could throw the entire bilboquet to the ceiling, and, catching 'the cup, pocket the ball in it in the same movement. , ;

Guizot, the statesman, was a fervent admirer of cup and ball. He always had several • implements of the game *in the drawers of his desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One day the British Ambassador called on him. The two were closeted together for an hour. Curiosity grew as to what new move was afoot bn the checker-board of Europe. Other callers grew restless. At last a secretary ventured to tap on the .door. He was told to come in. He opened the door and found the Minister and'his Ambassador, each armed with a cup and ball, playing a match. >"■• v •■■