The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds 103
him a good parti for his daughter and had gone to great lengths to entertain him every time he went to Vienna.
It
was Monsieur Gotin who first offered to introduce me to the night life
of Paris. He would take me to dinner and then on to a show, he said. I
was full of anticipation, for I had as yet seen nothing but office,
street and boulevard-café life. I soon found that this Monsieur Gotin
was a rare hypocrite, a smug fellow who had been lauded by the old
gentleman in Vienna as a model of what a Godfearing young man should
be. Dinner over, he suggested a visit to the Casino de Paris.
"I
am in your hands, monsieur," said I, wondering a little, for I thought
it a queer place to be taken to by a model of propriety. The revue
which was then being staged had the name of being one of the best of
its kind for many seasons, but for all that, most of the audience
seemed to be paying no attention whatever to the performance. In fact,
the house was divided into two parts: the auditorium and the "promenoir", and of the two the promenoir was
the most important, because few of the men to be found there bothered
to step beyond it. Instead they sat at small side tables on raised
platforms where refreshments were served, and surveyed in comfort the
moving crowd of well-groomed men and elegant demimondes who formed the
concourse. But why should I describe at length what every travelled
Englishman and American who has been in Paris probably knows by heart?
Even as a raw youth I, too, had seen painted vice on the trottoirs of Vienna's mean streets and had fled from
