The Indianapolis Journal

THE BLACK CAT.
What the Famous Paris Restaurant Has Come to Be.

Harper's Magazine.

The cafe of the Black Cat was originally a sort of club where journalists, and artists, and poets met around the tables of a restaurant-keeper who happened to be a patron of art as well, and who fitted out his cafe with the canvases of his customers and adopted their suggestions in the arrangement of its decoration. The outside world of Paris heard of these gatherings at the Black Cat, as the cafe and club were called, and of the wit and spirit of its habitues, and sought admittance to its meetings, which was at first granted as a great privilege. But at the present day the cafe has been turned over into other hands, and is a show place pure and simple, and a most interesting one. The cafe proper is fitted throughout with heavy black oak, or something in imitation of it. There are heavy broad tables and high wainscoting, and an immense fireplace and massive rafters. To set off the somberness of this the walls are covered with panels in the richest of colors, by Steinlen, the most imaginative and original of the Parisian illustrators, in all of which the black cat appears as a subject, but in a different role and with separate treatment. Upon one panel hundreds of black cats race over the ocean, in another they are waltzing with naiads in the woods, and in another are whirling through space over red-tiled roofs, followed by beautiful young women, gendarmes and boulevardiers in hot pursuit. And in every other part of the cafe the black cat appears as frequently as did the head of Charles I in the writings of Mr. Dick. It stalks stuffed in its natural skin, or carved in wood, with round glass eyes and long red tongue, or it perches upon the chimney piece with back arched and tail erect, peering down from among the pewter pots and salvers. The gas-jets shoot from the mouths of wrought iron cats and the dismembered heads of others grin out into the night from the stained glass windows. The room shows the struggle for what is odd and bizarre, but the drawings in black and white and the water colors and oil paintings on the walls are signed by some of the cleverest artists in Paris. The inscriptions and rules and regulations are as odd as the decorations. As, for example, the one place half way up the narrow flight of stairs which leads to the tiny theater, and which commemorates the fact that the cafe was on such a night visited by President Carnot, who—so the inscription adds, lest the visitor should suppose the Black Cat was at all impressed by the honor—“is the successor of Charlemagne and Napoleon I.” Another fancy of the Black Cat was at one time to dress all the waiters in the green coat and gold olive leaves of the members of the institute, to show how little the poets and artists of the cafe thought of the other artists and poets who belonged to that ancient institution across the bridges. But this has now been given up, either because the uniforms proved too expensive, or because some one of the Black Cat's habitues had left his friends "for a ribbon to wear in his coat," and so spoiled the satire.