'
'Oh, the pity of it--the pity of it!' murmured Mrs. Kempton. 'I wonder
whether I ought to have shown him Mary's letter.'
WHEN I AM KING
'_Qu'y faire, mon Dieu, qu'y faire?_'
I had wandered into a tangle of slummy streets, and began to think it
time to inquire my way back to the hotel: then, turning a corner, I
came out upon the quays. At one hand there was the open night, with
the dim forms of many ships, and stars hanging in a web of masts and
cordage; at the other, the garish illumination of a row of
public-houses: _Au Bonheur du Matelot_, _Cafe de la Marine_,
_Brasserie des Quatre Vents_, and so forth; rowdy-looking shops
enough, designed for the entertainment of the forecastle. But they
seemed to promise something in the nature of local colour; and I
entered the _Brasserie des Quatre Vents_.
It proved to be a _brasserie-a-femmes_; you were waited upon by
ladies, lavishly rouged and in regardless toilets, who would sit with
you and chat, and partake of refreshments at your expense. The front
part of the room was filled up with tables, where half a hundred
customers, talking at the top of their voices, raised a horrid
din--sailors, soldiers, a few who might be clerks or tradesmen, and an
occasional workman in his blouse. Beyond, there was a cleared space,
reserved for dancing, occupied by a dozen couples, clumsily toeing it;
and on a platform, at the far end, a man pounded a piano.
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