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made the Englishmen laugh and poured out a breathless
stream of conversation, whimsical, high-spirited, and jolly.
In due course they went out to dinner and afterwards to the
Gaite Montparnasse, which was Flanagan’s favourite place
of amusement. By the end of the evening he was in his most
extravagant humour. He had drunk a good deal, but any in-
ebriety from which he suffered was due much more to his
own vivacity than to alcohol. He proposed that they should
go to the Bal Bullier, and Philip, feeling too tired to go to
bed, willingly enough consented. They sat down at a table
on the platform at the side, raised a little from the level of
the floor so that they could watch the dancing, and drank a
bock. Presently Flanagan saw a friend and with a wild shout
leaped over the barrier on to the space where they were
dancing. Philip watched the people. Bullier was not the
resort of fashion. It was Thursday night and the place was
crowded. There were a number of students of the various
faculties, but most of the men were clerks or assistants in
shops; they wore their everyday clothes, ready-made tweeds
or queer tail-coats, and their hats, for they had brought them
in with them, and when they danced there was no place to
put them but their heads. Some of the women looked like
servant-girls, and some were painted hussies, but for the
most part they were shop-girls. They were poorly-dressed in
cheap imitation of the fashions on the other side of the river.
The hussies were got up to resemble the music-hall artiste or
the dancer who enjoyed notoriety at the moment; their eyes
were heavy with black and their cheeks impudently scarlet.
The hall was lit by great white lights, low down, which em-