[Illustration: COALS vs. COATS]
The principal fair-ground--though the occasion crammed the whole city
with revelers--was just outside the gate. It was a veritable town in
miniature, with a pattern of checker-board streets--Columbine street,
Polichinelle street, Avenue des Parades, Place des Parades, Street of
the Chanson, and the like. There were more than five hundred booths,
all numbered--shops and restaurants. There were the Salon Curtius,
the Menagerie Bidel, the Bal Mabille, the Cafe Bataclan, the American
Tavern. From one of the little costumers' shops, Charles--with
a higher evincement of antiquarian taste than I should have
expected--managed to bear away a pattern of wall-paper, which I
afterward conferred on Mary Ashburleigh with great applause: it was
Parisian of 1824, the epoch of Charles Dix, and was entirely covered
with giraffes in honor of that puissant and elegant monarch. The above
establishments were near the entrance, to the right.
At the left were more attractions: another menagerie, a heap of
ostensible gold representing the five milliards paid by France, a
gallery of astonished wax soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian
war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" confectionery. Farther on, in the
Theatre Casti, was exposed the "renowned buffoon Peppino," breveted by
His Majesty the "king of Egypt;" then came the Chiarini Theatre; then
the Theatre Adrien Delille, an enchantingly pretty structure, where
receptions were given by a little creature who should have sat under
a microscope: she was "the Princess Felicia, aged thirteen, born at
Clotat, near Marseilles, weighing three kilogrammes and measuring
forty-six centimetres--a ravishing figure, admirably proportioned in
her littleness and _tout a fait sympathique!"_
The announcements were heard, it was thought by Charles, to the very
centre of the city.
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