him that there was a sort of box in a corner of the Chamber of Horrors,
in which one could in some measure conceal oneself. And then, as
Silviane's carriage--a large closed landau, whose coachman, a sturdy,
handsome fellow, sat waiting impassively on his box--was down below, they
started off.

The Chamber of Horrors was installed in premises on the Boulevard de
Rochechouart, formerly occupied by a cafe whose proprietor had become
bankrupt.* It was a suffocating place, narrow, irregular, with all sorts
of twists, turns, and secluded nooks, and a low and smoky ceiling. And
nothing could have been more rudimentary than its decorations. The walls
had simply been placarded with posters of violent hues, some of the
crudest character, showing the barest of female figures. Behind a piano
at one end there was a little platform reached by a curtained doorway.
For the rest, one simply found a number of bare wooden forms set
alongside the veriest pot-house tables, on which the glasses containing
various beverages left round and sticky marks. There was no luxury, no
artistic feature, no cleanliness even. Globeless gas burners flared
freely, heating a dense mist compounded of tobacco smoke and human
breath. Perspiring, apoplectical faces could be perceived through this
veil, and an acrid odour increased the intoxication of the assembly,
which excited itself with louder and louder shouts at each fresh song. It
had been sufficient for an enterprising fellow to set up these boards,
bring out Legras, accompanied by two or three girls, make him sing his
frantic and abominable songs, and in two or three evenings overwhelming
success had come, all Paris being enticed and flocking to the place,
which for ten years or so had failed to pay as a mere cafe, where by way
of amusement petty cits had been simply allowed their daily games at
dominoes.