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XLII

here was a general disturbance. Flanagan and two
Tor three more went on to the music-hall, while Philip
walked slowly with Clutton and Lawson to the Closerie des
Lilas.
‘You must go to the Gaite Montparnasse,’ said Lawson
to him. ‘It’s one of the loveliest things in Paris. I’m going to
paint it one of these days.’
Philip, influenced by Hayward, looked upon music-halls
with scornful eyes, but he had reached Paris at a time when
their artistic possibilities were just discovered. The pecu-
liarities of lighting, the masses of dingy red and tarnished
gold, the heaviness of the shadows and the decorative lines,
offered a new theme; and half the studios in the Quar-
ter contained sketches made in one or other of the local
theatres. Men of letters, following in the painters’ wake,
conspired suddenly to find artistic value in the turns; and
red-nosed comedians were lauded to the skies for their sense
of character; fat female singers, who had bawled obscure-
ly for twenty years, were discovered to possess inimitable
drollery; there were those who found an aesthetic delight
in performing dogs; while others exhausted their vocabu-
lary to extol the distinction of conjurers and trick-cyclists.
The crowd too, under another influence, was become an
object of sympathetic interest. With Hayward, Philip had

0 Of Human Bondage