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