DEATH'S CAFE IN PARIS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5115, 24 November 1894, Page 1

DEATH'S CAFE IN PARIS.

{New Yorh Sun.)

The 1 front is painted black. A boy in mourning stands upon the sidewalk to distribute invitation oardß :

Ho, Cloda of Dust ! Winded by pride, corrupted and rotted by passions and vices of all kinds ! Wretches, tremble ! And if there be. still titne, Come to Me, and perhaps niy Spectacle, by ita Reality, may make you better and open to you the only horizon, the sole end of all things here below —and that is Nothingness. I wait for you !

Death.

The door is hidden by blaok hangings sown with silver tears. You pnsh the hangings by* and etep into a spacious darkened room, where a few candles give an impressive twilight. A great voice balls — " Soyez-ie bienvenu a la Mort, Maccabee!" A dozen coffins on supports replaoethe ordinary cafe tables. It is the Caf&of ; Death, the latest thing in Pariß of the fin-de-siecle order. Thursday nights are reserved for the grand monde, each glass? of beer is two francs, and you may kiss the undertaker free. On ordinary nights the bock is thirteen sous.

It is on the artistic Boulevard de Clichy, a few blocks north of the great boulevard, and half-way up the Montmartre Hill— the quarter of tbe Moulin Kouge and the Bat Mort, of journalists and artists and models. The Boulevard de Clichy is both wide and shaded. The promenade at night is thronged with gixlsand bailies. Tramp sleep on the benches. Working men in blouses saunter in the evenings, smoking pipes. ,

Innumerable cafes and drinking shops make the scene , bright. The Moulin Rouge's blood-red windmill arms go round and round like a set piece of fireworks; And there are vagrant strains of music from the concerts. One of these concerts is the Concert Liebonne, formerly the so* called Cafe* des Concierges. The Mirliton of Aristide Bruattt, the poet of the Blums, is just below. The Carillon, around the corner, tries to give old fashioned songd and recitations of a more" decent character than has been the vogue for some years past. The Chat Noir has just failed^ The! Dead Bat, just across the avenue, is— wellj a very special restaurant. It is enough to Bay thai this Cafe of Death is by all odds the most decent establishment along the line.

The name of this establishment is hot really the Cafe de la Mort, although all Fans csllb it so. When firat opened it was under that name that they gave yen beer to drink from imitation skulls. Bat; the police paid them a visit, ordered that drink should be Berved in plain glaßßea, tod . suppressed the name of death. So now ifcß title is, officially, the Cabaret (or. drinking shop) dv NSanfc. iNSant ;s French for nothitignessr " ■ ■'■' " '■"■'"]■". , v 7 " You sit beßide your coffin in the big, black room, and yon see sitting herd and there- in philosophic attitddea big skeletons that yawn and snap their jaws at intervals. Death scenes and midnight orgies decorate the walls. Above the door Of the Black Chamber of Transfiguration are the words " Mors ultima ratio." Lastly, to provide for all things, there ia the suggestive sign : " The lady clients are desired to scream tout doticemtnti" that is, very gehtly> very softly.

The waiters are costumed as undertakers' men in black coats of an ancient cut, tall oilcloth hats, and with black bands of cr£pe tied round their arms. Such men in real life have the name of crogue'tnorts ("bite-dead") from the ancient duty which they had of biting each dead man's toe before the coffin lid was nailed down, to make sure the body was not merely in a trance.

" Come, now, you consumptives and tuberculous morgue slabs, unredeemed tickets, descend from your hooks, heap yourselves up in the charnel house, the one great equaliser ! "

With your beer you have received a ticket for the other world. The crowd moves onward underneath an archway into a black, vaulted passage. Here women often have attacks of nerves; for as the alley widens into what looks like a burial cellar underneath a church, there strike upon the vision scenes in the far off perspective underneath the archeß and between the pillars, vague glimpses of gray skeletons engaged in conversation or the dance. The passage narrows and there is a door. You knock. A bell strikes three. There is a voice: "What do you seek, my brother ? " You respond : "Je voudrdis crev&'?" (I wish to die.) There is a rattling of chains, and you are in the Chamber ot Transfiguration.

The attendants are clothed in monks' robes, with hoods. You take your Beats. The master stands before a curtain, saying :

. "Kinga, pork butchers, journalists* artists, cures, ministers,' deputies and day labourers, all you who, having arrived at the age of reason, continue on your crazy courses, your more or less chimerical ambitions, who live on like animals, who know nothing, forgetting too often that the Tarpeian rock is near the Capitol (.'/: look in the box of dominoeß and reflect ! "

The curtain is drawn aside. Down a long vista, brightly lighted, is seen an open coffin standing on one end. They ask a Maocabee de bonne volont4 to sacrifice himaelf for the others.

One of the spectators steps out, half ashamed, half smiling, half repugnant, two-thirds curious, and three-fourths anxious to shine in the eyes of the community. He is led off, to reappear beside the coffin in the distance. A parlour organ strikes up a distressing hymn-tune as they make the man stand in the coffin. Undoubtedly it is the same man, smiling in a sickly fashion to his friends down in the audience. The transformation in him that will soon take place ia brought about by magic-lantern effects, S3 in dissolving views.

The man stands in the coffin, and they tuck a sheet around him, leaving only his face uncovered. The attendant disappears. The man looks at ypu from his coffin ; aB he looks at you his face grows whiter. Often enough the "subject" is an adventurous girt The horrid parlour organ goes on with its horrid hymn. Green lights begin to play. There is a smell of phenol and old bones. Sometimes a girl or woman in the audience has a cn'se de oier/s at this point, and is led off sobbing ; but the spectators for the most part sit still, staring blankly at the white face in the coffin. The face takeß on a graenishyellow tint, it softens, seema to decompose, then hardens, as the eyes grow bigandblaok. The body, covered by the Bheet, begins to shine through dimly, a yellow mass that loses flesh, that shows its bones. The Bheet ta disappearing. The light growß more intense. The coffin ho.lds a rigid, bony skeleton, and nothing more. The man who had Btepped up so jauntily from out the audience to get into the coffin —he is gone. The girl who looked bo timid, bo pathetic, bo pitiful, so pitiable, yes, and bo lovable— because the white light paled and purified the miserable little face— the garl is gone. All that is left is that dread thing of

bonep. The voice of the gravedigger speaks of death in a dogmatic tone : — "We shall not fear it if we look it in the face."

There is an awful silence. The spectators, rise up, jdne by< one, and step out, Stumbling,' to the street.