The great French capital is astir.
It is the hour when crime and vice and wickedness reign.
Hundreds of fiacres drive madly through the streets conveying women,
flashing with jewels and as beautiful as dreams, from opera and concert,
and the little bijou supper rooms of the Cafe Tout le Temps are filled
with laughing groups, while bon mots, persiflage and repartee fly upon
the air--the jewels of thought and conversation.
Luxury and poverty brush each other in the streets. The homeless gamin,
begging a sou with which to purchase a bed, and the spendthrift roue,
scattering golden louis d'or, tread the same pavement.
When other cities sleep, Paris has just begun her wild revelry.
The first scene of our story is a cellar beneath the Rue de Peychaud.
The room is filled with smoke of pipes, and is stifling with the reeking
breath of its inmates. A single flaring gas jet dimly lights the scene,
which is one Rembrandt or Moreland and Keisel would have loved to paint.
A garcon is selling absinthe to such of the motley crowd as have a few
sous, dealing it out in niggardly portions in broken teacups.
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