About Paris . most picturesque figures in Paris,but his picturesqueness is spoiled in some de-gree by the evident fact that he is conscious ofit. He is a poet, but he is very much more ofa poseur. Bruant began by singing his own songs inthe cafe chantant in the Champs Elysees, andcelebrating in them the life of Montmartreand the Place de la Republique, and of theBastille. He has done for the Parisian bullywhat Albert Chevallier has done for the costerof Whitechapel, and Edward Harrigan for theEast Side of New York, but with the importantdifference that the Frenchman claims to be oneof the clas
About Paris . most picturesque figures in Paris,but his picturesqueness is spoiled in some de-gree by the evident fact that he is conscious ofit. He is a poet, but he is very much more ofa poseur. Bruant began by singing his own songs inthe cafe chantant in the Champs Elysees, andcelebrating in them the life of Montmartreand the Place de la Republique, and of theBastille. He has done for the Parisian bullywhat Albert Chevallier has done for the costerof Whitechapel, and Edward Harrigan for theEast Side of New York, but with the importantdifference that the Frenchman claims to be oneof the class of whom he writes, and the audac-ity with which he robs stray visitors to his cafewould seem to justify his claims. There is noquestion as to the strength in his poems, northat he gives you the spirit of the places whichhe describes, and that he sees whatever is dra-matic and characteristic in them. But the utterheartlessness with which he writes of the wick-edness of his friends the souteneurs rings false,. THE SHOW-PLACES OF PARIS 67 and sounds like an affectation. One of thebest specimens of his verse is that in whichhe tells of the Bois dc Boulogne at night, whenthe woods, he says, cloak all manner of evilthings, and when, instead of the rustling of theleaves, you hear the groans of the homeless toss-ing in their sleep under the sky, and calls forhelp suddenly hushed, and the angry cries ofthieves who have fallen out over their spoilsand who fight among themselves ; or the hurriedfootsteps of a belated old gentleman hasteninghome, and followed silently in the shadow of thetrees by men who fall upon and rob him afterthe fashion invented and perfected by le PereFrancois. Others of his poems are like themost realistic paragraphs of LAssoinnioir andNana put into verse. Bruant himself is a young man, and an ex-tremely handsome one. He wears his yellowhair separated in the middle and combedsmoothly back over his ears, and dresses at alltimes in brown velvet, with trousers tucke
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