Lapin Agil', come with me into that auberge of the Avenue Trudaine where are banned catch-coin stratagems, fleshly pyrotechnics, that little refuge whose wall gives forth the tableau of Salis, he of the Niagaran whiskers and the old Chat Noir, strangling the adolescent versifiers of Montmartre, the tableau of the crimson rose of Poetry blossoming from out their strangling pools of blood. Come with me and sing a chorus with the crowd in the "conservatoire" of the Boulevard Rochechouart and beat time, like the rest of it, with knife on plate, with glass on table. Come away from the Brasserie des Sirènes of Mademoiselle Marthe in the Faubourg Poissonnière, from the Rue Dancourt, from the Moulin Rose in the Mazagran—from all such undiluted cellars of vicious prostitution—if these be Paris, then West Twenty-eighth Street in New York.
Look you, romance seeker, rather into the
