THE RETURN OF THE FAIRGROUNDS

Four neighborhood fairs are opening today. The largest is the Lion of Belfort.

Four dress rehearsals are taking place today at 2 o'clock. All Parisians are invited, and yet no theatrical mail announces them. Don't be surprised... They are simply four fairs, funfairs, opening in the four corners of Paris.

The first has conveniently set up shop on the Place de la Nation, this Sahara of the twelfth arrondissement. The second is setting up its painted canvas shacks from one end of the Avenue de Flandre to the other in the horse-dealing and butchers' district. Hearing their brothers on the rides turn obediently to the sound of a java, the pigs in the slaughterhouses will certainly think: "How lucky they are!" »
More aristocratic, loving greenery and calm, a third fair has gone to camp around the Batignolles square. Residents of the seventeenth, your nights will be momentarily disturbed by languorous waltzes and gunshots! It will remind you of your vacations…

But, more important and more sumptuous than all the others, a last fair occupies for three weeks the Place du Lion de Belfort and the adjacent boulevards. The turnstiles are prepared; the clowns have put on their red silk costumes, sown with a flight of butterflies. The bottles of “American taste” champagne are lined up on the shelves, like ballet dancers. The big green tarpaulin that weighs on all the shops will suddenly fly away, and the party will begin.

It is always the same, this party, and yet always new. Tonight, old Parisians will spend crazy amounts of money to win a salad bowl, to pierce boxes or to deferentially contemplate disturbing sea monsters. They have it in their blood.

The roar of the wild beasts is already calling all the inhabitants of the left bank to the Place Denfert-Rochereau. Because there are wild beasts. They arrived this morning in their cages with solid bars. They saw the Lion of Belfort, harmless, motionless, useless. They thought: "Is that a lion?"
Now, they are masters of the square.