Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, September 5, 1891 by Various
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page 2 of 46 (04%)
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uncertain on this point.
We pass a theatre, brilliantly illuminated. I see posters on the wall advertising the performance. A gendarme, in full uniform, as if he had come out after playing _Sergeant Lupy_ in _Robert Macaire_, is pensively airing himself under the _façade_, but there is no one else within sight,--no one; not a _cocher_ with whom _Sergeant Lupy_ can chat, nor even a _gamin_ to be ordered off; and though, from one point of view, this exterior desolation may argue well for the business the theatre is doing, yet, as there is no logical certainty that the people, who do not appear outside a show, should therefore necessarily be inside it, the temple of the Drama may, after all, be as empty as was _Mr. Crummles_' Theatre, when somebody, looking through a hole in the curtain, announced, in a state of great excitement, the advent of another boy to the pit. And now we rattle over the stones joltingly, along a fairly well-lighted street. All the shops fast asleep, with their eyelids closed, that is, their shutters up, all except one establishment, garishly lighted and of defiantly rakish, appearance, with the words _Café Chantant_ written up in jets of gas; and within this _Café_, as we jolt along, I espy a _dame du comptoir_, a weary waiter, and two or three second-class, flashy-looking customers, drinking, smoking, perhaps arguing, at all events, gesticulating, which, with the low-class Frenchmen, comes to much the same thing in the end, the end probably being their expulsion from the drinking-saloon. Where is the _chantant_ portion of the _café_? I cannot see,--perhaps in some inner recess. With this flash of brilliancy, all sign of life in Reims disappears. We drive on, jolted and rattled over the cobble stones--(if not cobble, what are they? Wobble?)--and so up to the |
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