But the climax of the night was reached last year when the band of a hundred pieces struck buoyantly into that most reckless and impudent of marches and comic songs, "The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo." The cymbals clashed, and the big drums emphasized the high notes, and the brass blared out boastfully with a confidence and swagger that showed how sure the musicians were of pleasing that particular audience with that particular tune. And they were not disappointed. The three thousand men and women hailed the first bars of the song with a yell of recognition, and then dancing and strutting to the rhythm of the tune, and singing and shouting it in French and English, they raised their voices in such a chorus that they could be heard defiantly proclaiming who they were and what they had done as far as the boulevards. And when they reached the high note in the chorus, the musicians, carried away by the fever of the crowd, jumped upon the chairs, and held their instruments as high above their heads as they could without losing control of that note, and every one stood on tiptoe, and many on one foot, all holding on to that highest note as long as their breath lasted. It was a triumphant, reckless yell of defiance and delight; it was the war-cry of that class of Parisians of which one always reads and which one sees so seldom, which comes to the surface only at unusual intervals, and which, when it does appear, lives up to its reputation, and does not disappoint you.
It happened a short time ago, when I was in Paris, that the ranks of those members of the Institute of France who are known as the Forty Immortals were incomplete, one of the Forty having but lately died. I do not now recall the name of this Immortal, which is not, I trust, an evidence of ignorance on my part so much as it is an illustration of the circumstance that when men choose to make sure of immortality while they are alive, in preference to waiting for it after death, they are apt to be considered, when they cease to live, as having had their share, and the world closes its account with them, and opens up one with some less impatient individual. It is only a matter of choice, and suggests that one cannot have one's cake and eat it too. And so, while we can but envy François Coppée in his green coat and his laurel wreath of the Immortals of France, we may remember the other sort of immortality that came to François Villon and François Millet, who were not members of the Institute, and whose coats were very ragged indeed. I do, however, remember the name of the gentleman who was elected to fill the vacancy in the ranks of the Forty, and in telling how he and other living men take on the robe of immortality I hope to report the proceedings of one of the most interesting functions of the French capital. He was the Vicomte de Bornier, and his name was especially impressed upon me by a paragraph which appeared in the _Figaro_ on the day following his admittance to the Academy.