This was the beginning of the shadow shows which made for years the Chat Noir famous. Here appeared the famous creations of RiviÈre and Flagerolle, the March À l’Etoile and l’Enfant Prodigue.

Later an ingenious shadow stage with intricate mechanism was installed and a series of shadow plays followed. Many of the puppets for these exist to-day in the cabaret of the Quat-Z’Arts, some of which are the work of Caran d’Ache.

Much of what once made the Chat Noir famous exists to-day in the best known of all the Montmartrois cabarets, the Quat-Z’Arts. Here sing the best of the chansonniers, and there is seldom a night when the back room of the cabaret in which this “smoker” occurs is not obliged to close its doors because there is literally no place for one more chair. The accompanist at the piano has hardly room for his elbows, and the singer just enough space to stand in. The walls of the low-ceiled room are hung with the inimitable caricatures by LÉandre and with sketches by celebrated artists.

The front room by which you enter and which is used as a cafÉ is a picturesque interior filled with busts and bas-reliefs, and more of LÉandre’s clever drawings.

A rustic stairway leads to a rambling gallery above.

The whole resembles the interior of some quaint, half-timbered tavern filled with artistic productions of men of genius. The interior of the Quat-Z’Arts was not made to order; it grew, and it walls are hung with souvenirs gathered from its clientÈle of comrades whose work as sculptors and draftsmen is known the world over.

The singers whose songs and satires have made the Quat-Z’Arts famous are men of rare genius and fine intellect, and by no means the idle bohemians you might expect to find.

Dominique Bonnaud is such a man. As a singing satirist, a polished writer and the most subtle of humorists, he stands preeminent. Bonnaud was at one time secretary to Prince Bonaparte, and in eleven years of travel made several voyages around the world. His experiences at foreign courts and among foreign potentates have supplied him with themes for many of his satires. These deal with politics and current topics, and hit at nobility in general and some noblemen in particular.

To the chansonnier Jean Bataille is due an interesting revival of the old songs of France. Songs like “Monsieur le CurÉ” and the “French Grenadier” Bataille sings with rare charm. He is essentially an entertainer, and outside of his nightly appearance at the Quat-Z’Arts has made a success in several revues of his own invention. In these he has played at regular theaters, the Mathurins and the Capucines. There is nothing of the type of a bohemian singer in the personality of Monsieur Bataille. This polished man of the world passed through a brilliant career as a member of the bar and was at one time secretary to the Minister of Interior.

Georges Tiercy is not only a singer but the most inimitable of comedians. His creations are unique. Sometimes he requires the accompaniment of the piano, and sometimes he does not, but, whichever way it is, he keeps his audience at the Quat-Z’Arts in roars of laughter.

It is Tiercy who sings his “Banquet to Monsieur Loubet,” “The Humbert Family,” and the “Train de Marchandises,” the latter ending with an imitation of grand opera which I can assure you is quite as complete as the grand opera itself and five times as amusing. “Come and see me,” said Tiercy one day as we sat chatting in the Quat-Z’Arts. He opened his wide gray eyes at me and passed his hand thoughtfully over his short-cropped forehead. Then he added in a hoarse whisper:

“I live in a forest! It is at Bois Colombes. Ah! my friend, you shall see a little house at the very edge of the real country. Come out and have a petit verre with me.” Then he frowned as he took out his watch and hurriedly left me to catch his train.

A few days later I went out to Bois Colombes to see him. The place did not look very woodsy as I got out of the train. There were no dark fastnesses or wild ravines; in fact, Bois Colombes was, if anything, sadly lacking in verdure. The town itself was quite a practical little place built up with modern houses.

Finally I came to the villa of my friend, the last of a pretty group of houses enclosed by a hedge. The author of the “Train de Marchandises” came out to greet me. He seemed worried and preoccupied and explained to me he was much fatigued, having just returned from a hard journey to Brussels where he had sung the day before.

“And where is the forest?” I asked.

“Ah!” he replied, as if saving a surprise, “you shall see. Come into the house and we will have a bottle of stout.”

I found the home of this serious humorist filled with interesting souvenirs of his life as a comedian and a chansonnier, and we sat chatting until late. My friend with the mysterious air told me many interesting incidents of his career which, in its early days, was one of mingled failure and success. Having played for many years in revues and operettas, Tiercy founded in 1893 his cabaret, the Carillon, where, with his creations, “The Clown Badaboum” and “OpÉra Maboul,” he achieved a triumph—“a succÉs fou!”

The Carillon failed after a short existence, for this man of humor, this generous son of Bohemia, was unsuited to the ways of close-fisted managers. Tiercy lost twenty thousand francs in the enterprise. He went back to his profession and sang in the Sans-Souci. Since then he has been a success as a mimic in nearly all the cabarets of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter.

“And now,” said my host seriously, “a glimpse at my woodland.” He opened the curtains of his sanctum. A spare group of trees hardly hid the next villa from view.

“My friend,” I said, “it is as you say, a veritable pays sauvage.”

And I hurried for my train with Tiercy’s laugh ringing in my ears.

While the back room of the Quat-Z’Arts is crowded nightly, the front room is filled with bohemian habituÉs; groups of painters, poets, and musicians sit chatting at the tables, some of them writing, others playing cards or dominoes.

In one corner Bonnaud, having finished his song, is engrossed in a manuscript. At another table a poet singer is correcting the verses of a new song with a fellow bard.

Next to these a girl, quite as Montmartroise as Marcelle, is in earnest conversation with a “type” in a black broad-brimmed hat and a stock wound about his throat. Perhaps it is the beginning of a romance, more likely the aftermath of an ended one. The girl had been crying.

“Toujours l’amour!” mutters an old bohemian in a rusty velvet coat, as he glances from his corner at the pair. He trickles a little fresh water into his absinthe and bends again over his writing.

The door opens and the singer, Gabriel Montoya, enters, hastily shaking hands with those about him and rushing to the back room, where his arrival is greeted with thunderous applause.

Monsieur Montoya’s poetic locks that crown his noble brow are mussed as if he had just escaped from a panic. He is invariably introduced as “Monsieur le Docteur” to his audience, his early life having been devoted to the study of medicine. He is a man of wide experience, having at one time made a tour around most of the world as a ship’s surgeon.

In personality Montoya is a mixture of a Chesterfield and the generous, open gallantry of a Don Quixote. Together with these qualities he possesses a tenor voice of rare charm. Besides all this he is a bon garÇon and one of the most popular chansonniers of Montmartre.

At one time during his career his health broke down and he was ordered south. Here he remained for some time away from Paris, and the report was current of his death. He was eulogized in several lengthy obituaries by leading journalists. These he had the rare opportunity of reading. During his convalescence he wrote “The Posthumous Author” and “The Verses of One who did not Die.” He took his degree of medicine in Montpellier. Hardly twenty-four hours after passing his degree he came across some of his old comrades from Montmartre in the street, who were then making a concert tour in the south of France. Their joy at seeing their old friend risen, as it were, from the grave, knew no bounds, and they insisted upon his accompanying them. This he did, abandoning his career of medicine to sing again.

He made his dÉbut at the Chat Noir in 1890. It was there that an incident occurred which illustrates Montoya’s remarkable memory.

“PhrynÉ,” the shadow play by Maurice Donnay, was performing when its author became involved in a duel with Catulle Mendes. Donnay was wounded, and therefore he was unable to return to the Chat Noir to recite the play. Salis in this extremity turned to Montoya for aid. The latter in one afternoon learned the twelve hundred lines of “PhrynÉ” and recited them the same evening without a mistake.

To Paul Delmet Paris owes many of her popular songs. This veteran chansonnier has composed volumes of exquisite ballads, parodies and satires. His songs, such as “Stances À Manon,” “Brunette aux Yeux Doux,” and his amusing “L’Escalier,” every Parisian knows. They are sung everywhere.

The late chansonnier, Aristide Bruant, was as extravagant and impractical as the great Balzac. He lived like a prince through good and bad luck in his chÂteau outside of Paris, and, dressed in black velvet, drove daily to and from his cabaret in Montmartre in a smart turnout. De Bercy, his friend, tells the following anecdote of Bruant:

He came banging at De Bercy’s door early one morning. “I have just been chosen as a candidate for election at Belleville Saint Fargeau,” cried Bruant excitedly, waking up the sleepy De Bercy. “Get into your clothes in a gallop; you will have to make my speech for me and we have just time to catch the train. We will breakfast at Belleville. I have accepted an invitation for both of us. We’ll breakfast first and you will have time to write your speech afterwards.”

Bruant could sing all night, but speech-making was not in his line.

The two hurried to Belleville and breakfasted, and afterwards De Bercy wrote madly for three hours and finished the address. Bruant knew that if he would ingratiate himself in the hearts of the Bellevillians he must do so by expressions indicating his sympathy with the current wrongs of the community. He must touch upon the rights of the widows and orphans, the wrongs of the working man, and other kindred topics.

It happened that Bruant had in his repertoire a lot of songs upon these very topics, none of which the good people of Belleville had ever heard.

The hour arrived and before a large and enthusiastic audience De Bercy launched into his speech. Each time he finished a portion of his discourse upon the widows or orphans, Bruant would burst into a song relative to the subject. He had one ready upon every question upon which his confrÈre spoke. The Bellevillians cheered and Bruant was elected by an overwhelming majority amid a furor of good-fellowship and an outpouring of the red wine of Belleville Saint Fargeau!

The “Treteau de Tabarin,” familiarly known as the “BoÎte À Fursy,” is a unique mixture of cabaret and theater in the rue Pigalle. Its owner and manager, Henri Fursy, is the author of the celebrated “Chansons Rosses.” These rough and ready satires are sparkling with wit. To invent a new type of songs is the achievement of an epoch, and this is what Fursy has done. He tells me he is not a poet, that his rhymes are often very poor.

“My style is not always good,” he said to me; “my songs are satires written upon the spur of the moment, and precisely in this crude state I present them to the public. If I worked over them they would lose much of their freshness.”

There is nothing of the bohemian chansonnier in Monsieur Fursy. He is a dapper, smartly dressed, alert, courteous, clean-cut man of business. By his wits, push and energy, he has made a success of his theater.

Perhaps he has seen too much of the Parisian method of transacting a business deal. This consists in taking four weeks to think about the proposition, several more of leisurely indecision, and a corresponding length of time to settle the matter. The Frenchman is astonished if in the meantime some other fellow with a little Anglo-Saxon hustle in him has seized the opportunity and signed the contract.

The quaint, rambling, half-timbered interior of the foyer to the BoÎte À Fursy is exceedingly picturesque. Rare drawings and etchings line the walls. The foyer has an ancient air about it of having been used as a hostelry during the Middle Ages. The walls are done in rough plaster and quartered beams. In one corner a primitive staircase leads to a rambling gallery, and the audience passes into the quaint auditorium through rough wooden doors running under a low rustic shed.

All of smart Paris goes to the BoÎte À Fursy. It is the smallest and one of the most expensive theaters in Paris, but the performance upon the small stage is sparkling with wit from beginning to end. Here short satirical revues are given by Fursy and other famous chansonniers, with Odette Dulac in the principal rÔle.

Mademoiselle Dulac is Parisian from the butterfly in her cadmium orange hair to the points of her satin slippers. This inimitable artiste is made up of two parts deviltry and one part champagne. She handles the most risquÉ situations with a delicious delicacy, humor, and the tact of a finished comedienne. She is the life of the revue at the BoÎte À Fursy. If you have heard Odette Dulac sing “Je Suis BÊte,” in long years to come the memory of it will serve to lift you out of the blues. You will recall the daintiness of this piquant and chic divette, her silk stockings, her frou-frou skirt, the glitter of her bodice, and the irresistible merriness of her eyes as she winked at you over the tip of her impudent little nose.

But all this is the art of the comedienne. At her home I found Mademoiselle Dulac a very gracious and charming woman, unspoiled by the applause that nightly rings in her little ears.

It took the genius of Capiello to caricature Odette Dulac and to give in a few clever lines all of this amusing artiste’s personality. When Dulac laughs, her eyes close like tiny half-moons through which the pupils sparkle—very small windows to a big merry soul.

There are some women who never seem to grow old and to whom youth seems ever constant. To be merry yourself and to make others merry is surely one secret of keeping young.

The homes of artists of the Parisian stage differ from the domiciles of others in the artistic world. The tumbled rattle-trap of a dusty studio does not appeal to great actors or divas. The homes of many of the latter are models of luxury and cleanliness.

Much of the perfection of the Parisian actress’s mÉnage is due to her faithful bonne, who is companion, cook, waitress, lady’s maid, and who, in a thousand ways, protects and watches over the interests of her mistress.

Perhaps the most typical cabaret audience is that in the “Noctambules,” in the rue Champollion. It is an unpretentious little place of the old type, where nightly appear some of the best singers of Montmartre: Tiercy and Montoya, Charles Fallot, Paul Delmet, BrÉville, Marinier and Madame Laurence Deschamps. The last is an artiste of rare charm, who possesses a voice sweet, pure and flexible, and whose interpretation of scores of exquisite ballades and berceuses have won for her the truest of all criticism: sincere applause. But I must not forget the veteran of them all, the bard of bards, Marcel Legay.

When you hear Legay you will have heard an artist whose stirring songs, like his “Mon Cheval” and “Les Pieds Devant,” create a furor wherever he sings them. Legay has a faculty of making you feel the roar of battle. He sings with fire and virility, and his personality fills the room.

In many of the cabarets it is the custom to give gala matinÉes and gala evenings with more celebrities than usual on the program. A grand tombola or lottery takes place at the close of the performance, the receipts being given as a testimonial benefit to one of the singers. It is needless to say the prizes offered by these good bohemians were purchased for as little as possible: a two-franc bottle of champagne, their own posters tied up with a ribbon, copies of their songs, etc., etc. Yet the rollicking spirit in which these things are praised by the poet auctioneers, and the fact that the proceeds are doing good to one of their number in need, amply repay the loss to one’s pocket.

Besides these gala matinÉes, classic evenings are given, classic poems are read, and the ancient songs of Provence and ballads of the sixteenth century are sung by the same chansonniers who the night before may have amused you with the “Voyage of Madame Humbert” and other parodies.

The poet Jehan Rictus has been known for years in the cabarets of the Butte and in those of the rive gauche.

Pale, lean and stooping, as he rises to speak he resembles some sad, nocturnal crane. He seems like one who nursed his melancholy and lived during his waking hours in the moonlight.

As a young man he descended nightly from the heights of Montmartre, where he lived, to join a circle of bohemians at the Cabaret de la Bosse. Here he came into recognition by the recitations of his poems and soliloquies.

The verses of Rictus dwell in misanthropic bitterness upon the misery of poverty. They are filled with the soliloquies of a pessimist and a misanthrope. The bitter misery of his earlier years through which he was forced to struggle, has no doubt taken the sunlight out of his heart, and yet beneath the varnish of a crude and bourgeois vocabulary lies the timber of true genius. What if the grain is fantastically distorted by a weird imagination! It is prized all the more by the connoisseurs.

Another veteran of the cabarets is Louise France.

There is something suggestive of old Paris in this short, squat woman with her puffy haggard face and her tangled hair.

In the days of the Terror just such a one might have headed a mob gathered by her songs and her verses. It requires very little make-up to transform Louise France into her rÔle of Frochard in “The Two Orphans” or into “Eva la Tomate” in “Mademoiselle Fifi.” Paris has not yet forgotten her famous characterization of the concierge in “La Voix du Peuple.”

Louise France has played at the ThÉÂtre Libre, at the Porte St. Martin, and the Grand Guignol, the characters she knew, and she played them to the life with wonderful skill.

Later she abandoned the stage to become editor of “La Fronde.” She has written many parodies, this gamine, this bonne femme; many of her verses are in the memory to-day of thousands.

Later in life she came as a chansonniÈre and rÉcitateuse to the cabarets. It was at EugÉnie Buffet’s cabaret “La PurÉe” that I heard her recite her verses.

Many of these her brain had created years ago, before her gray hairs came. Some were new and all of them were true. Within the heart of Louise France lie tenderness and pity. Hear her recite “Les Grues,” and you will realize how human she is and how much she knows of life and forgives.

To-day she seems happy among her old comrades in Bohemia whom she has been with so many years.

Dear old soul, would that the whole world had been as human and understanding as you, and as free from meanness, pettiness, and the haggling over that which in the end counts for naught! All through your life your brain has been busy producing much that is beautiful and pure. Come, then, give us “Les Petits Soldats,” we will listen quietly to the very end. Some of us, I fear, will cry, and when your song is ended, all of us will give you a double-ban of applause and drink your health.

To Pierre Trimouillat is due a whole volume of clever parodies and satires. He is a modest little man with no enemies and a host of friends who know that back of his satires lies kindly good-fellowship. From year to year, ever since his success as a singing satirist was assured among the founders of the “Chat Noir,” he has sung in a quiet voice the words which his satirical wit has invented.

Many of Trimouillat’s satires and parodies have been interpreted by the most talented men and women of the French stage.

In Trimouillat, Xavier Privas found a right-hand man for his new cabaret La Veine.

Xavier Privas is not at all the type of poet one would expect to find among the bards of the Butte. Tall, of powerful physique, with the voice of a Falstaff and a genial hospitable manner, he looks much more like a big, blustering, gallant cavalry officer, and this is precisely what he once was.

It is Privas who wrote the delicate fantasy full of color, of lightness, and of pathos, “Le Testament de Pierrot,” and it is he who has written others upon a hundred themes on love and war under the titles of “Chanson de RÉvolte” and “Chanson d’Aurore.”

His verse is musical and his song contains that which is finished and beautiful.

Some of these bards are tall and thin, wearing their hair long as did the troubadours and the minstrels of the Middle Ages; others are dapper and business-like, wear sensible modern clothes, and get their hair cut regularly.

The chansonnier of to-day in Montmartre is not the velvet-coated, long-haired poet that one could have seen two score of years ago, muffled in his cloak, with his verses beneath his arm, wending his way to some cozy corner of this Bohemia to join his fellow poets and recite his couplets, returning to his garret singing at the break of dawn. Those were the poet-singers of the time of Henri Murger.

To-day the cabarets of Montmartre are regarded for the most part as purely business ventures, and it is the ambition of many of these chansonniers to own and direct their own cabaret, make their fortune, and retire in comfort before old age. Many of them are married men with families to support. There is every inducement for them to lead domestic lives. Singing night after night in the smoke and often vitiated air of the cabarets is fatiguing work.

Even the best chansonniers are paid but little for their work. Ten francs a night is the regular price, and many women sing for less.

The price charged for admission varies from one franc and a half up to three francs, which sum includes your drink. The seating capacity of these cabarets is limited, and the profits are in proportion. These low salaries are not confined to the cabarets alone.

There are women whose names appear in startling big letters on the bills of concert-halls who get nine francs a night for a turn of three songs with encores and three matinÉes a week, not including extra performances on fÊte days.

Out of this they are obliged to provide effective gowns, and these must be replaced by fresher ones before they become too familiar to the audience. Besides, the singers are obliged to pay their dresser, for few can afford a maid, and the dressing-room attendant and the hair-dresser attached to the establishment. They must even pay for the orchestration of their songs, and for their own posters. Many of these women are well supported, but there are many more to whom an honest life is a hopeless struggle for existence.

Should they accept a position in the big cafÉs-concerts like those of the Champs-ÉlysÉes, they will be paid more for their services, but the expenses extorted from them will be increased in proportion.

“Did you walk again to-day, Mademoiselle D.?” asked a manager of a leading open-air music-hall of one of his most attractive artistes. “You know it does not look well for you to be seen arriving on foot.”

His manner was polite, but his tone suggested to this hard-working little singer, “Forever after at least a fiacre!”

A few days later he continued:

“Don’t you think you had better put on a new gown, mademoiselle? The public gets tired of seeing the same dresses.”

“But, monsieur, that is the third one I have had in six weeks and I can not manage, with my salary, to have a new gown every week.”

“Well, then,” said the manager, “let me arrange matters for you. You please the public and I am ready to make as fair a proposition to you as I do to the others. I will give you an engagement for three seasons on the condition that you shall dine at least three nights a week in the restaurant upstairs.”

“Monsieur,” answered mademoiselle, indignantly, “when that becomes my mÉtier, I shall manage it myself.”

Among the bons garÇons and braves filles of the vie de BohÈme, on the Butte, this good Parisienne would have been held in respect and esteem.

There are few marriages among these bohemians of the Butte, but love they hold sacred, and woman as the ideal of all creation. Among scores of these petits mÉnages exist peace, happiness and fidelity. Many are the most domestic of homes. Sometimes these bons garÇons and braves filles do marry, just as they tell you Pierrot really did in the end, beneath the trembling organ and the tolling bell; but these instances are rare. When one does happen, the quarter speaks of it as of some unusual incident in the lives of friends, such as a voyage to China.

Beneath an undulating haze of incense from a dozen gurgling pipes a song floats through the cabaret. Listen!