She pointed¹ at one of the large white-curtained windows of the restaurant, through which was visible a round column covered with advertisements of theatres, music-halls, and concert-halls, printed in many colours and announcing superlative delights. Names famous wherever pleasure is understood gave to their variegated² posters a pleasant air of distinguished³ familiarity—names of theatres such as “Variétés,” “Vaudeville,” “Châtelet,” “Théâtre Français,” “Folies-Bergère,” and names of persons such as “Sarah Bernhardt,” “Huegenet,” “Le Bargy,” “Litvinne,” “Lavallière.” But the name in the largest type—dark crimson⁴ letters on rose paper—the name dominating all the rest, was the name of Musa. The ingenuous⁵ stranger to Paris was compelled to think that as an artist Musa was far more important than anybody else. Along the length of all the principal boulevards, and in many of the lesser⁶ streets, the ingenuous stranger encountered, at regular distances of a couple of hundred yards or so, one of these columns planted on the kerb; and all the scores of them bore exactly the same legend; they all spoke⁷ of nothing but blissful diversions, and they all put Musa ahead of anybody else in the world of the stage and the platform. Sarah Bernhardt herself, dark blue upon pale, was a trifle compared to Musa on the columns. And it had been so for days. Other posters were changed daily—changed by mysterious hands before even bread-girls were afoot with their yards of bread—but the space given to Musa repeated always the same tidings, namely that Musa ("the great violinist") was to give an orchestral concert at the Salle Xavier, assisted by the Xavier orchestra, on Thursday, September 24, at 9 P.M. Particulars of the programme followed.

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