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I have never seen the occupants of the cottage in any of my numerous visits to this open air restaurant, but once, towards eleven o'clock the crowd in the square becoming too noisy, the upper windows were suddenly thrown up and a pailful of water descended.... "Per Baccho!" quoth the inn-keeper for, it must be known, the Restaurant Cou-Cou is Italian by nature of its patron and its cooking.
An artist's house disturbs the view on the side towards Paris; opposite is the restaurant, flanked on the right by a row of modest apartment houses, to which one gains entrance through a high wall by means of a small gate. Many of the visitors to the Cou-Cou hang their hats and sticks on this fence and its gate.
Sometimes I go to the Luxembourg gardens to hear the band bray sad music, or to watch the little boys play diavolo, or sail their tiny boats about the fountain pond; sometimes I walk quite silently up the Avenue Gabriel, with its triste line of trees, and dream that I am a Grand Duke; in the evening there are again the terrasses of the cafés, dinner in Montmartre at the Clou, or the Cou-Cou, a revue at La Cigale, but it is all governed, my day and my night, by what happens and by whom I meet.... Have you seen Jacques Blanche's portrait of Nijinsky?"
But that was before I discovered the bal musette. One July night in Paris I had dinner with a certain lady at the Cou-Cou, followed by cognac at the Savoyarde.
At the Cou-Cou you pay for what you eat, not for what you order. And the Signora, Pietro's mother? That unhappy woman usually stands in front of the door, where she interferes with the passage of the girls going for food. She wrings her hands and moans, "Mon Dieu, quel monde!" with the idea that she is helping vastly in the manipulation of the machinery of the place.
An officer went up to her, a little red book in his hand. A conversation about some matter proceeded painfully. The officer grew very red. Andrews threw back his head and laughed, luxuriously rolling from side to side in the straw. Chrisfield laughed too, he hardly knew why. Over their heads they could hear the feet of pigeons on the roof, and a constant drowsy rou-cou- cou-cou.
I have described the Cou-Cou as it was this night and as it has been all the nights during the past eight summers that I have been there. The dinner too is always the same. It is served
I find nothing strange in this program; it seems to me that I must have dined at the Cou-Cou with every one I have known in Paris from time to time, a range of acquaintanceship including Fernand, the apache, and the Comtesse de J , and cognac at the Savoyarde usually followed the dinner. This evening at the Cou-Cou then resembled any other evening. Do you know how to go there?
The tables of the Restaurant Cou-Cou occupy nearly the whole of this tiny square, to which there are only two means of approach, one up the stairs from the city below, and the other from the Place du Tertre.
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