Of all the balls in Paris, the annual “Bal des Quat’z’ Arts” stands unique. This costume ball is given every year, in the spring, by the students of the different ateliers, each atelier vying with the others in creation of the various floats and cortÉges, and in the artistic effect and historical correctness of the costumes.

The first “Quat’z’ Arts” ball was given in 1892. It was a primitive affair, compared with the later ones, but it was a success, and immediately the “Quat’z’ Arts” Ball was put into the hands of clever organizers, and became a studied event in all its artistic sense. Months are spent in the creation of spectacles and in the costuming of students and models. Prizes are given for the most successful organizations, and a jury composed of painters and sculptors passes upon your costume as you enter the ball, and if you do not come up to their artistic standard you are unceremoniously turned away. Students who have been successful in getting into the “Quat’z’ Arts” for years often fail to pass into this bewildering display of beauty and brains, owing to their costume not possessing enough artistic originality or merit to pass the jury.

It is, of course, a difficult matter for one who is not an enrolled member of one of the great ateliers of painting, architecture, or sculpture to get into the “Quat’z’ Arts,” and even after one’s ticket is assured, you may fail to pass the jury.

Imagine this ball, with its procession of moving tableaux. A huge float comes along, depicting the stone age and the primitive man, every detail carefully studied from the museums. Another represents the last day of Babylon. One sees a nude captive, her golden hair and white flesh in contrast with the black velvet litter on which she is bound, being carried by a dozen stalwart blackamoors, followed by camels bearing nude slaves and the spoils of a captured city.

As the ball continues until daylight, it resembles a bacchanalian fÊte in the days of the Romans. But all through it, one is impressed by its artistic completeness, its studied splendor, and permissible license, so long as a costume (or the lack of it) produces an artistic result. One sees the mise en scÈne of a barbaric court produced by the architects of an atelier, all the various details constructed from carefully studied sketches, with maybe a triumphal throne of some barbaric king, with his slaves, the whole costumed and done in a studied magnificence that takes one’s breath away. Again an atelier of painters may reproduce the frieze of the Parthenon in color; another a float or a decoration, suggesting the works of their master.

The room becomes a thing of splendor, for it is as gorgeous a spectacle as the cleverest of the painters, sculptors, and architects can make it, and is the result of careful study—and all for the love of it!—for the great “Quat’z’ Arts” ball is an event looked forward to for months. Special instructions are issued to the different ateliers while the ball is in preparation, and the following one is a translation in part from the notice issued before the great ball of ’99. As this is a special and private notice to the atelier, its contents may be interesting:

For days before the “Quat’z’ Arts” ball, all is excitement among the students, who do as little work as possible and rest themselves for the great event. The favorite wit of the different ateliers is given the task of painting the banner of the atelier, which is carried at the head of the several cortÉges. One of these, in Bouguereau’s atelier, depicted their master caricatured as a cupid.

The boys once constructed an elephant with oriental trappings—an elephant that could wag his ears and lift his trunk and snort—and after the two fellows who formed respectfully the front and hind legs of this knowing beast had practised sufficiently to proceed with him safely, at the head of a cortÉge of slave girls, nautch dancers, and manacled captives, the big beast created a success in the procession at the “Quat’z’ Arts” ball.

After the ball, in the gray morning light, they marched it back to the atelier, where it remained for some weeks, finally becoming such a nuisance, kicking around the atelier and getting in everybody’s way, that the boys agreed to give it to the first junk-man that came around. But as no junk-man came, and as no one could be found to care for its now sadly battered hulk, its good riddance became a problem. What to do with the elephant! that was the question.

At last the two, who had sweltered in its dusty frame that eventful night of the “Quat’z’ Arts,” hit upon an idea. They marched it one day up the Boulevard St. Germain to the CafÉ des deux Magots, followed by a crowd of people, who, when it reached the cafÉ, assembled around it, every one asking what it was for—or rather what it was?—for the beast had by now lost much of the resemblance of its former self. When half the street became blocked with the crowd, the two wise gentlemen crawled out of its fore and aft, and quickly mingled, unnoticed, with the bystanders. Then they disappeared in the crowd, leaving the elephant standing in the middle of the street. Those who had been expecting something to happen—a circus or the rest of the parade to come along—stood around for a while, and then the police, realizing that they had an elephant on their hands, carted the thing away, swearing meanwhile at the atelier and every one connected with it.

The cafÉs near the OdÉon, just before the beginning of the ball, are filled with students in costume; gladiators hobnob at the tables with savages in scanty attire—Roman soldiers and students, in the garb of the ancients, strut about or chat in groups, while the uninvited grisettes and models, who have not received invitations from the committee, implore them for tickets.

Tickets are not transferable, and should one present himself at the entrance of the ball with another fellow’s ticket, he would run small chance of entering.

“What atelier?” commands the jury “Cormon.”

The student answers, while the jury glance at his makeup.

“To the left!” cries the jury, and you pass in to the ball.

But if you are unknown they will say simply, “Connais-pas! To the right!” and you pass down a long covered alley—confident, if you are a “nouveau,” that it leads into the ball-room—until you suddenly find yourself in the street, where your ticket is torn up and all hope of entering is gone.

It is hopeless to attempt to describe the hours until morning of this annual artistic orgy. As the morning light comes in through the windows, it is strange to see the effect of diffused daylight, electricity, and gas—the bluish light of early morning reflected on the flesh tones—upon nearly three thousand girls and students in costumes one might expect to see in a bacchanalian feast, just before the fall of Rome. Now they form a huge circle, the front row sitting on the floor, the second row squatting, the third seated in chairs, the fourth standing, so that all can see the dancing that begins in the morning hours—the wild impromptu dancing of the moment. A famous beauty, her black hair bound in a golden fillet with a circle wrought in silver and studded with Oriental turquoises clasping her superb torso, throws her sandals to the crowd and begins an Oriental dance—a thing of grace and beauty—fired with the intensity of the innate nature of this beautifully modeled daughter of Bohemia.

As the dance ends, there is a cry of delight from the great circle of barbarians. “Long live the Quat’z’ Arts!” they cry, amid cheers for the dancer.

The ball closes about seven in the morning, when the long procession forms to return to the Latin Quarter, some marching, other students and girls in cabs and on top of them, many of the girls riding the horses. Down they come from the “Moulin Rouge,” shouting, singing, and yelling. Heads are thrust out of windows, and a volley of badinage passes between the fantastic procession and those who have heard them coming.

Finally the great open court of the Louvre is reached—here a halt is made and a general romp occurs. A girl and a type climb one of the tall lamp-posts and prepare to do a mid-air balancing act, when rescued by the others. At last, at the end of all this horse-play, the march is resumed over the Pont du Carrousel and so on, cheered now by those going to work, until the OdÉon is reached. Here the odd procession disbands; some go to their favorite cafÉs where the festivities are continued—some to sleep in their costumes or what remains of them, wherever fortune lands them—others to studios, where the gaiety is often kept up for days.

Ah! but life is not all “couleur de rose” in this true Bohemia.

“One day,” says little Marguerite (she who lives in the rue Monge), “one eats and the next day one doesn’t. It is always like that, is it not, monsieur?—and it costs so much to live, and so you see, monsieur, life is always a fight.”

And Marguerite’s brown eyes swim a little and her pretty mouth closes firmly.

“But where is Paul?” I ask.

“I do not know, monsieur,” she replies quietly; “I have not seen him in ten days—the atelier is closed—I have been there every day, expecting to find him—he left no word with his concierge. I have been to his cafÉ too, but no one has seen him—you see, monsieur, Paul does not love me!”

I recall an incident that I chanced to see in passing the little shop where Marguerite works, that only confirms the truth of her realization. Paul had taken Marguerite back to the little shop, after their dÉjeuner together, and, as I passed, he stopped at the door with her, kissed her on both cheeks, and left her; but before they had gone a dozen paces, they ran back to embrace again. This occurred four times, until Paul and Marguerite finally parted. And, as he watched her little heels disappear up the wooden stairs to her work-room above, Paul blew a kiss to the pretty milliner at the window next door, and, taking a long whiff of his cigarette, sauntered off in the direction of his atelier whistling.

It is ideal, this student life with its student loves of four years, but is it right to many an honest little comrade, who seldom knows an hour when she is away from her ami? who has suffered and starved and slaved with him through years of days of good and bad luck—who has encouraged him in his work, nursed him when ill, and made a thousand golden hours in this poet’s or painter’s life so completely happy, that he looks back on them in later life as never-to-be-forgotten? He remembers the good dinners at the little restaurant near his studio, where they dined among the old crowd. There were Lavaud the sculptor and Francine, with the figure of a goddess; Moreau, who played the cello at the opera; little Louise Dumont, who posed at Julian’s, and old Jacquemart, the very soul of good fellowship, who would set them roaring with his inimitable humor.

What good dinners they were!—and how long they sat over their coffee and cigarettes under the trees in front of this little restaurant—often ten and twelve at a time, until more tables had to be pushed together for others of their good friends, who in passing would be hailed to join them. And how Marguerite used to sing all through dinner and how they would all sing, until it grew so late and so dark that they had to puff their cigarettes aglow over their plates, and yell to Madame Giraud for a light! And how the old lady would bustle out with the little oil lamp, placing it in the center of the long table amid the forest of vin ordinaires, with a “VoilÀ, mes enfants!” and a cheery word for all these good boys and girls, whom she regarded quite as her own children.

It seemed to them then that there would never be anything else but dinners at Madame Giraud’s for as many years as they pleased, for no one ever thought of living out one’s days, except in this good Bohemia of Paris. They could not imagine that old Jacquemart would ever die, or that La Belle Louise would grow old, and go back to Marseilles, to live with her dried-up old aunt, who sold garlic and bad cheese in a little box of a shop, up a crooked street! Or that Francine would marry Martin, the painter, and that the two would bury themselves in an adorable little spot in Brittany, where they now live in a thatched farm-house, full of Martin’s pictures, and have a vegetable garden of their own—and a cow—and some children! But they DID!

And those memorable dinners in the old studio back of the Gare Montparnasse! when paints and easels were pushed aside, and the table spread, and the piano rolled up beside it. There was the buying of the chicken, and the salad that Francine would smother in a dressing into which she would put a dozen different things—herbs and spices and tiny white onions! And what a jolly crowd came to these impromptu feasts! How much noise they used to make! How they danced and sang until the gray morning light would creep in through the big skylight, when all these good bohemians would tiptoe down the waxed stairs, and slip past the different ateliers for fear of waking those painters who might be asleep—a thought that never occurred to them until broad daylight, and the door had been opened, after hours of pandemonium and music and noise!

In a little hotel near the OdÉon, there lived a family of just such bohemians—six struggling poets, each with an imagination and a love of good wine and good dinners and good times that left them continually in a state of bankruptcy! As they really never had any money—none that ever lasted for more than two days and two nights at the utmost, their good landlord seldom saw a sou in return for his hospitable roof, which had sheltered these six great minds who wrote of the moon, and of fate, and fortune, and love.

For days they would dream and starve and write. Then followed an auction sale of the total collection of verses, hawked about anywhere and everywhere among the editeurs, like a crop of patiently grown fruit. Having sold it, literally by the yard, they would all saunter up the “Boul’ Miche,” and forget their past misery, in feasting, to their hearts’ content, on the good things of life. On days like these, you would see them passing, their black-brimmed hats adjusted jauntily over their poetic locks—their eyes beaming with that exquisite sense of feeling suddenly rich, that those who live for art’s sake know! The keenest of pleasures lie in sudden contrasts, and to these six poetic, impractical Bohemians, thus suddenly raised from the slough of despond to a state where they no longer trod with mortals—their cup of happiness was full and spilling over. They must not only have a good time, but so must every one around them. With their great riches, they would make the world gay as long as it lasted, for when it was over they knew how sad life would be. For a while—then they would scratch away—and have another auction!

Unlike another good fellow, a painter whom I once knew, who periodically found himself without a sou, and who would take himself, in despair, to his lodgings, make his will, leaving most of his immortal works to his English aunt, go to bed, and calmly await death! In a fortunate space of time his friends, who had been hunting for him all over the Quarter, would find him at last and rescue him from his chosen tomb; or his good aunt, fearing he was ill, would send a draft! Then life would, to this impractical philosopher, again become worth living. He would dispatch a “petit bleu” to Marcelle; and the two would meet at the CafÉ Cluny, and dine at La Perruse on filet de sole au vin blanc, and a bottle of Haut Barsac—the bottle all cobwebs and cradled in its basket—the garÇon, as he poured its golden contents, holding his breath meanwhile lest he disturb its long slumber.

There are wines that stir the soul, and this was one of them—clear as a topaz and warming as the noonday sun—the same warmth that had given it birth on its hillside in Bordeaux, as far back as ’82. It warmed the heart of Marcelle, too, and made her cheeks glow and her eyes sparkle—and added a rosier color to her lips. It made her talk—clearly and frankly, with a full and a happy heart, so that she confessed her love for this “bon garÇon” of a painter, and her supreme admiration for his work and the financial success he had made with his art. All of which this genial son of Bohemia drank in with a feeling of pride, and he would swell out his chest and curl the ends of his long mustache upwards, and sigh like a man burdened with money, and secure in his ability and success, and with a peaceful outlook into the future—and the fact that Marcelle loved him of all men! They would linger long over their coffee and cigarettes, and then the two would stroll out under the stars and along the quai, and watch the little Seine boats crossing and recrossing, like fireflies, and the lights along the Pont Neuf reflected deep down like parti-colored ribbons in the black water.