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In the old hôtel of the Lesdiguières family, rue de la Tour d’Auvergne, the “Carillon” opened its doors in 1893, and quickly conquered a place in the public favor, the inimitable fun and spirits of Tiercy drawing crowds to the place.

The famous “Tréteau de Tabarin,” which to-day holds undisputed precedence over all the cabarets of Paris, was among the last to appear. It was founded by the brilliant Fursy and a group of his friends. Here no pains have been spared to form a setting worthy of the poets and their public.

Many years ago, in the days of the good king Louis XIII., a strolling poet-actor, Tabarin, erected his little canvas-covered stage before the statue of Henry IV., on the Pont-Neuf, and drew the court and the town by his fun and pathos. The founders of the latest and most complete of Parisian cabarets have reconstructed, as far as possible, this historic scene. On the wall of the room where the performances are given, is painted a view of old Paris, the Seine and its bridges, the towers of Notre Dame in the distance, and the statue of Louis XIII.’s warlike father in the foreground. In front of this painting stands a staging of rough planks, reproducing the little theatre of Tabarin. Here, every evening, the authors and poets play in their own pieces, recite their verses, and tell their stories. Not long ago a young musician, who has already given an opera to the world, sang an entire one-act operetta of his composition, changing his voice for the different parts, imitating choruses by clever effects on the piano.

Montmartre is now sprinkled with attractive cabarets, the taste of the public for such informal entertainments having grown each year; with reason, for the careless grace of the surroundings, the absence of any useless restraint or obligation as to hour or duration, has a charm for thousands whom a long concert or the inevitable five acts at the Fran�ais could not tempt. It would be difficult to overrate the influence such an atmosphere, breathed in youth, must have on the taste and character. The absence of a sordid spirit, the curse of our material day and generation, the contact with intellects trained to incase their thoughts in serried verse or crisp and lucid prose, cannot but form the hearer’s mind into a higher and better mould. It is both a satisfaction and a hope for the future to know that these influences are being felt all over the capital and throughout the length and breadth of France. There are at this moment in Paris alone three or four hundred poets, ballad writers, and raconteurs who recite their works in public.

It must be hard for the untravelled Anglo-Saxon to grasp the idea that a poet can, without loss of prestige, recite his lines in a public café before a mixed audience. If such doubting souls could, however, be present at one of these noctes ambrosianæ, they would acknowledge that the Latin temperament can throw a grace and child-like abandon around an act that would cause an Englishman or an American to appear supremely ridiculous. One’s taste and sense of fitness are never shocked. It seems the most natural thing in the world to be sitting with your glass of beer before you, while some rising poet, whose name ten years later may figure among the “Immortal Forty,” tells to you his loves and his ambition, or brings tears into your eyes with a description of some humble hero or martyr.

From the days of Homer poetry has been the instructor of nations. In the Orient to-day the poet story-teller holds his audience spellbound for hours, teaching the people their history and supplying their minds with food for thought, raising them above the dull level of the brutes by the charm of his verse and the elevation of his ideas. The power of poetry is the same now as three thousand years ago. Modern skeptical Paris, that scoffs at all creeds and chafes impatiently under any rule, will sit to-day docile and complaisant, charmed by the melody of a poet’s voice; its passions lulled or quickened, like Alexander’s of old, at the will of a modern Timotheus.