CHAPTER XIII
CARLOTTA SEES RED
Standish's was the sort of place which the world sees nightly in the films—discounting their arch magnificence, of course, and leaving as net, something showy, noisy, and crass. Now ordinarily, where men and women, wine, gold, and the passions foregather, it is reasonable to expect romance, colour, if only the much admired hues of the Flowers of Evil. But here even such resplendent blooms are choked by the bindweed Greed. Baudelaire has given way to Irving Berlin. The revels are but so many transactions. And the "atmosphere" has as much of the real quality as a theatre air-cooler matched with the ocean's breath.
Everybody is out on the make, each trying to extract something, in cash or sensation, from his neighbour,—waiter from customer, head-waiter from underling, guest from host, and host from guest—man from woman, and woman from man. Now, on occasion at least, Montmartre can make of merriment an art. One may be a spendthrift yet even through Frailty's rent robe show something of the reprehensible but splendidly natural. Here the hand instead of flinging away with a careless grace, even as it spends is outstretched to seize. The quarry, not the moment's fleeting
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