brutish impurities, couched in coarse verse, in such abodes of vice to that of the reading public. And when, by chance, you see printed, or hear one of those hymns of Montmartre of the glories of Bullier or the Moulin Rouge, it seems to you a proof of infallible justice on the part of contemporary judgment that these mediocre scoundrels should have failed.
Yet the Parisian grisette, even when she is far from being a model of virtue, if she has not been vitiated by the bal public is a very well-behaved and gracious little creature. Her standard of life is not high, but such as it is, it is attained with surprising dignity, and it is thanks to the lover who leads her to the public ball, that she becomes acquainted with the ignoble, the profane, and the outrageous. Left to herself, she would ask for nothing better than a quiet and refined interior, a little money to spend capriciously, as many pretty, inoffensive fineries to wear as are necessary to make her always pleasant to be looked at, an occasional cheerful outing, with a picnic at Robinson or in the woods of Vincennes, or safe water-excursions at Bougival, with the certainty of replacing the present lover on the same discreet and advantageous lines. She takes no heed of the morrow, and it is this improvidence and the public ball that inevitably accomplish her ruin when she does not find—and it must be admitted she more frequently than
