known woman, or some scandalous piece of news, while street arabs, gliding between the tables, cunning as cats, are selling obscene pictures, half revealed, to awaken dormant passions, to stir up curiosities gone to sleep. And little girls whose premature depravity has already blighted their gaunt, childish faces are offering for sale bouquets of flowers, smiling with a dubious smile, charging their glances with the ripe and hideous immodesty of old prostitutes. Inside the cabaret all the tables are taken. . . . There is not a single vacant place. . . . People are drinking champagne without really wanting it and munching sandwiches without in the least caring for them. Occasionally curious people enter the place, before going to their clubs or to bed, by force of habit or from a mere desire to show off or to see if there is "anything doing" there. Slowly and slouching in their walk, they slink about the groups of guests, stopping to chat with their friends here and there and, waving their hands in greeting to some one at a distance, look at themselves in the mirrors, fix their white cravats which stick out from under their light overcoats, then leave, their minds enriched with a few new slang expressions of the underworld, with a few more scandals picked up here and upon which their idleness will thrive for a whole day.
The women with elbows resting on the table, an ice cream soda in front of them, their weak faces, hatched with fine pink lines, supported by long gloved hands, assume a languid air, a suffering mien and a sort of consumptive dreaminess. They exchange mysterious winks and imperceptible smiles with their neighbors at nearby tables, while the gentleman accompanying them, silent and affectedly courteous, strikes the point of his shoes with the tip of his cane. The gathering presents a brilliant spectacle variegated with lace and
