Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/358

330 being cheaper than bread, alcohol deceived their sudden pangs of hunger and deadened the twinges of their stomachs. A wretched man spends more time in sleeping off the effects of bitter gin than in digesting a ridiculous mouthful of bread. And the fumes of the liquor, heavy and dense as the splenetic fogs of the country, passed away the more slowly lest the new blood again become cold in their veins. They procured a bizarre and brutal drunkenness during which the stupefied organs demanded no food and the instincts slept like reptiles in torpor.

For three nights the Théâtre des Variétés, uniting in a single immense hall its suite of four huge rooms, swarmed with a rutilant mob, blazed with lights, resounded with savage music and furious stamping. Within, there reigned a hubbub and a confusion of all castes almost as great as in the street. Ladies and lorettes, foreladies and shop-girls, grisettes and prostitutes fluttered about in the same quadrilles. Silk and satin dominos rubbed against horrible hired cloaks. During intermissions, while young swells in full dress were leading a mistress for whose sake they had deserted their fiancees into the little withdrawing room, and treating her to the classic dozen of "Zeeland" sprinkled with Roederer, the vaults beneath the dancing floor, converted into a Gargantuan cook-shop, claimed the less fashionable couples and groups who were cramming themselves, in the midst of the strong exhalations of pipes, with boiled sausage, and were flooding themselves with a sparkling, white Louvain beer, the popular champagne, which was not at all heady, but which cleansed out their bladders without having any other effect upon their organisms.