"Quel Beau Nu"

Scores of Parisians taxied to the Concert Mayol. They all but crowded out the foreigners who have long since found that the Concert, which is just off the Grands Boulevards, is more convenient, more daring and more chic than the Folies Bergere, farther up Montmartre. Elbowing their way forward the eager Parisians were waited upon by the most insolent and rapacious hat-check girls, program boys, and tip-extracting ushers in Western Europe. Forewarned that the foreigners have accustomed the Concert's servitors to pocket a bill of any size without giving change, the Parisians placed exactly one franc 50 centimes (6c) in the hands of the program boys, and rewarded the ushers with 50 centimes per head (2c) for showing them to their seats. Then they settled down to enjoy Quel Beau Nu, successor to last year's devastatingly successful revue, Tres Excitant.

The citizens of the U. S. and Argentina, who are the mainstay of the Concert, wondered idly at the number of "natives" present. The first act passed without an explanation. During the entre-acte a line of men and women in evening dress formed docilely in the lobby, purchased tickets to the single washroom for 75 centimes each (3c),* filed in and out with equanimity.

As the curtain rose again, Mlle. Marcelle Parisys, blond and unhampered by modesty, appeared as "a statuet vender," and held up to view a statuet which those in the first ten rows pronounced to be an excellent likeness of herself. Mlle. Parisys announced loudly and stridently in argot that she would tell the world it was a good likeness: "Et maintenant, Messieurs! Combien pour moi (holding up the statuet)? How much for me--stiff like this?"

One of Mlle. Parisys' supporting cast rushed from the wings: "No, my dear Mademoiselle! You cannot make this sale until you have bought a sales-tax-stamp from Finance Minister Doumer! He must have money to pay our debts to the U. S.!"

Mile. Parisys: "But I have nothing! Anyone can see that! I am like France! France cannot pay!"

Amid cries of "`a bas Americains" from the audience, Mlle. Parisys burst into a song in untranslatable* argot, in which she voiced her determination to sell whatever she pleased without paying a sales tax.

Wild cheering ensued. An actor in horn-rimmed glasses and huge trousers, "an American," rushed upon the stage from the audience and hinted that there might be still other ways in which "the honest girls of France" could liquidate the national debt. Mlle. Parisys slapped him in the face, amid pandemonium.

Later scare-head-seeking journalists pointed out that the French political stage-censor must have O. K.'d Mlle. Parisys' act, and drew ugly and excited conclusions from this fact.

Seasoned boulevardiers of every nation merely chuckled.

*The Concert Mayol has been until very recently the only theatre in France which has had the hardihood to make this charge.

*Excerpts:

"It makes my blood boil to have our Government tax honest French girls to pay the debts of France to these stubborn Americans. . . . I urge that France be credited on her debt with three francs each time an American gets drunk in Paris. Then it will soon be that the United States will owe money to France."