Paris: The Novel

these with thelatest electric lights, which provided a sparkling overlay, magnified in the huge mirrored glass by the stage that reflected the whole scene. The effect was both risqué and magical at the same time.
    The orchestra was excellent. And then there were the dancers.
    They danced a medley of arrangements that night. There were exotic dances, gymnastic dances with one dancer after another dropping down dramatically to do splits, and then, of course, the dance that had become the Moulin’s signature: the cancan.
    “I’m sorry you never got to see La Goulue perform this,” the captain said to Roland, who nodded. In the space of five years, La Goulue had made herself a legend. Now she’d gone off with a circus on her own. But her replacement, Jane Avril, already made famous thanks to a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec, was quite as good. And where La Goulue was loud and outrageous, Avril was a little more elegant.
    The troupe came on, in silk dresses, black stockings and extravagant, frilly petticoats. They began in a line, swishing their skirts, and performing half kicks. Then they broke up into a complex choreography. The kicks grew higher. One did a cartwheel. Two others dropped into the splits. They formed back into two lines. And then Jane Avril made her entrance.
    If the troupe was athletic, Avril was something more. If the girls had formed a line to support each other as they performed the high kicks, Avril could balance on one leg, like a ballerina, performing half kicks and high kicks one after the other as she made a pirouette. Minute after minute, while the troupe performed all the cancan moves and the tempo increased, Avril was out in front of them, dancing a sort of descant to their tune, before sinking at last, in a single, fluid fall, into a split that made it look like the most natural thing in the world.
    It was the cancan, yet beyond the cancan. It was a work of art.
    When it ended, no one rose to their feet faster than Roland.
    “Magnificent!” he cried as he applauded.
    When the audience had finished applauding, the master of ceremonies announced that there would now be a pause for the orchestra to take refreshments before the general dancing began.
    For the officers at the table, the moment had come. The captain took command.
    “On this sheet of paper,” he announced, drawing it from his pocket, “are written the twenty names of the officers in the draw. Against eachname is a number. On each of these small cards”—he produced them with a flourish—“is written a single number from one to twenty. Please inspect them.” He laid them ceremoniously on the table. “Very well. To ensure absolute fairness, I have here a blindfold.” He produced a black silk bandana. “Luc!” he called to the waiter. “Come here and bring me a large soup bowl.”
    Luc obliged at once.
    Roland noticed that the waiter was quite a handsome young man, with a broad, intelligent face and dark hair, a lock of which fell down over his broad brow. He might be French or possibly Italian, Roland thought. But his age was hard to guess. He had a lithe way of moving that suggested he might be only twenty, but there was a smoothness and worldliness in his manner that belonged to an older man.
    “Luc,” announced the captain, “I am going to blindfold you.” And he began to tie the black bandana around the waiter’s head.

    As Jacques Le Sourd entered the Moulin Rouge, he did not see the officers at first. He certainly wasn’t looking for them. He’d come there to dance.
    Jacques was a busy man. After a brief spell as a teacher, he had turned to his father’s trade as a typesetter. The work was hard, but he still found time to write articles for the various socialist journals that had sprung up. Today had been a free day, and he’d spent it working on an article he was writing for
Le Parti Ouvrier
about the anarchist movement.
    It had been a long afternoon. He’d been up on Montmartre, in the Lapin Agile bar, a picturesque establishment on the back slope of the hill, where artists and people with anarchist views liked to congregate. He had interviewed three anarchists. By the time he was finished, it was well into the evening.
    He had wanted to write on the anarchists for a while. During the last few years there had been a number of incidents in France that were supposed to be their work. Bombs had exploded, quite a few people had been killed. There had been a government crackdown, and a number of