The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1898-02-28


The death of the ex-consul was grand
actually.
Jacques Dantin thus became a dra-
matte parsonage. The reporters created
legends about him. Some declared him
guilty and brought up in support of
their conviction some anecdotes, some
tales from the clubs, given as proofs
others asked if the suggestions were
sufficiently we'll based to accuse a man
in advance of trial, and these latter
ardently took up his defense. Paul Ro-
der had even, with much dexterity and
eloquence, automatically written two
articles one ON either side of the ques-
tion.
"It is, +" he said to himself, "the sure
way of having told the truth on one
side or the other
Bernardet did not renounce for an in
slant the hope of finding the man who
had sold the picture. 1t was not the
first time that he had picked the needle
from a cartful of hay. Paris is large,
but this human sea has its particular
currents, as the ocean has special tides,
and the police officer knew it well.
Here or there some day he would meet
the man, cast up by the torrent like
waif.
First of all, the man was probably a
stranger from some foreign land. Wear
ing hat like Spaniard, he had not
had time to change the style of dress of
the country from which he had come
in search of adventures. Bernardet
haunted the hotels, searched the regis
tiers, made conversation with the lodg-
ers He found poor persons who had
come from foreign countries, but whose
motives for coming to Paris were all
right. Bernardet never stopped search
ing a moment. He went everywhere,
curious and prying, and it pleased him,
when he found leisure evening, to go
to some of the strange wineshops or
alehouses (called cabarets) to find sub
jects for observation. These cabarets
are very numerous on the outskirts of
Montmartre, III the streets and boule-
wards at the foot of the Butte bizarre
inventions, original and disagreeable
creations where the ingenuity of the en-
terprisers sometimes made them hideous
in order to attract, to cater to the idle
and to hold the loungers from among
the higher classes; cabarets born of the
need for novelty which might stimulate
the blase, the demand for something
eccentric almost to morbid irony,
dance Macabre trod to the measures of
an operetta, pleasantries of the bun
glers adopting the cure alls of the saw
bones and juggling with their empty
heads while dreaming the dreams of
Hamlet.
Cabaret du Squelettel
The announcement of the droll prom
ises-apparitions, visions, phantoms-
had often made him smile when he had
passed near there to go to the prefecture
this wineshop, the front of which was
bordered with black, like a letter an
nouncing death, and which bore, graf
ing as it swung at the end of an iron
rod, red lantern for sign.
His little girls, when he laughingly
spoke of the cabaret where the walters
were dressed like undertakers' assist
ants, turned pale, and plump little
Nine. Bernardet, ordinarily smiling,
would say, with sigh, 'Is it possible
that such sacrilegious things are per-
mitted in the quarter?''
Bernardet good naturally replied,
"Ah, my dear, where is the harm?'
81 know what am talking about"
his good wife said. "They are the pleas
ure of the unhealthy minded. They
mock at death as they mock at every
thing else Where will it all end? We
shall see it,
cor we shall not see it," interrupted
her husband laughingly.
He went in there one evening, having
little time to himself, as he would
have gone into q theater. He knew
something about this Cabaret du Sque-
lette (meaning the wineshop of the
skeleton). He found the place very droll.
A small hall which had few months
before been common wineshop had
been transformed into a lugubrious
place. The walls were painted dead
black and were hung with large num-
Der of paintings-scenes from masked
balls, gondolas, parades, serenades with
a balcony scene, some of the lovers
rendezvous Of Venice and an ideal view
of Graaa Ia, with couples gazing at eacn
other and signing in the gondolas on
the lagoons or in the Andalusian courts,
and in this strange place with its ro-
mantle pictures, souvenirs of Musset or
of Carlo Gozzi, the tables were made in
the form of collins with lighted candles
standing upon them, and the walters
were dressed as undertakers' assistants,
with shiny black hats trimmed with
Grape on their heads.
What poison will you drink before
you die?'' asked one of the creatures of
Bernardet
Bernardet sat and gazed about him.
A few high fliers' from the other
side of Paris were there. Here and there
thief from that quarter sat alone at q
table. Some elegants in white cravats,
who had come there in correct evening
dress, were going later, after the opera,
to sup with some premiere. The police
officer understood very well why the