Emile Goudeau presided,—as nearly, that is, as any one can be said to preside in a Latin Quarter assembly. There was liberty to drink, smoke, and woo the _grisette_. There were folly and tumult, confusion and fun; violin, piano, and guitar music; singing in concert of riotous roof-lifting refrains; recitations of novelties and the classics by Villain, Leloir, Le Bargy, and Coquelin _Cadet_ of the _Comédie Française_. Paul Mounet, also of the _Comédie_, arrayed in a blue blouse and red neckerchief, interpreted _La Grève des Forgerons_ week in and week out with telling effect. Maurice Rollinat sang his own songs and those of Pierre Dupont, and recited selections from his _Névroses_ and _Brandes_. Laurent Tailhade, Jean Moréas, Georges d’Esparbès, Louis Marsolleau, Jean Ajalbert, André Gill, Léon Valade, Charles Monselet, Paul Marrot, Edmond Haraucourt, Félicien Champsaur, Mac-Nab, Auguste Vacquerie, Louis Tiercelin, Alphonse Allais, Jules Jouy, and a full score more of poets and _chansonniers_ rendered their works. Bourget, Coppée, Paul Arène, Luigi Loir, and Bastien-Lepage were frequent, though for the most part passive, spectators. All degrees of talent, all shades of politics, and all of the poetic schools were represented. Bernhardt was proud to be known as a _Hydropathe_. Francisque Sarcey and Jules Claretie visited the _Hydropathes_, and praised them in the press. The police threatened to dissolve them, but wisely refrained.
The _Hirsutes_ differed from the _Hydropathes_ only in name and in the fact that the name had an obvious significance.
It was the _Grand’ Pinte_ (a Louis XIII. cabaret of Montmartre, frequented, but without mummery or fracas, by a band of painters and poets) that gave Rodolphe Salis, an _ex-Hydropathe_, the idea of putting the boisterous _Hydropathe_ performances into a picturesque setting and inviting the paying public to attend. Salis, who was the son of a prosperous man of affairs, was in Bohemia against his father’s wishes. Half-artist and half-littérateur, he supported himself, when the paternal purse-strings were tightened, by writing for the press and painting _Viae Dolorosae_ at fourteen francs apiece. In making himself “_gentilhomme-cabaretier_,” as he called it, this resourceful Salis had hit upon a device for reconciling theory with practice, filial submission with personal inclination, and Bohemia with business, which, to say the least, was not commonplace.