Bands filled the streets by day but they were nothing to the strains of night pervading every lane and every boulevard as though they were no more than lanes for this music of this city devouring like a dragon and a dragon for its fascination scarlet, gold, emerald, sapphire rhythms sacrificing hearts, memories, bones, and ears the crashing and the clashing, the blaring and stark shrieking, and they could not get enough. 
        No 1 who came could get enough. 
  gaslights were not bright enough, the kicking toes not high enough, the music was not fast enough, the dancing long enough, nor the tables crowded enough for them. 
        The cafe was like a cat in the lane near the top of the climb up the mount. 
        The river was not far away, nor its islands, lovers below, artists above, the cafe between like a cat in the cobbled lane its glowing eyes, quick snapping jaws, its beauty rampant, sleek, subtle, blatant, opportunistic, guiltless like a cat the cafe was. 
        Small arched windows, small arched door, curtained, hiding nothing, lights glowed golden ushering the press of small clothed tables where crowded those in search of more than proferred broken bread and wine in green bottles, brown bottles, tall bottles more even than the stage could offer though it quavered, trembled, shook, resounded bravely enduring nightly the heels of heady women dancing. Tails and trails of feathers wove the air in streamers of enchantment. Black, red, orange, blue, dragon green and gold the ostrich feathers and flamingo plumes sequined and encrusted with gilded dust and mixtures of earth and egg. 
  

        The powdered shoulders of the women, their cheeks and arms, were flushed and plump, they gathered 1 another in and in a line thumped and kicked, oscillated, wavered most delightfully, most delightfully captivating, their lips were rouged, their cheeks, their eyes kohled and sparkling with belladonna and silver dust their hair sequined, too, brushed with oils, hennaed, siennaed, peroxided, arsenicked into fairy realms of wonderful enhancement. 
        The music lanced; it clasped and drew, it bent and changed, the music pierced, hypnotized, drugged into far ecstasies for which they begged, begged without shame. Like a cat. 
        Few before the stage and suckling from its boards cared what lay behind though that might be said by some, and they not the least aware, to be the center after all the sine qua non cafe and all. Tiny little holes there were mysteries of warren and comb by wadded costumes and accoutrements stuffed, hung, tossed, discarded, night after night for years for the city was old and the needs older and the dust built up in the layers of bright fabric and they forgot the glitter of old ways but they were there, piled, draped, trampled, used anew.