Their enterprise on that evening had taken place after their exhibition had closed, when Jim and the Doctor started with Jeffrey and Daniel and two or three friends who were pledged to take care of them. It was on Sunday evening, when the greatest crowds attend these places, and I have no other account of what they did and what they saw than that they gave me on their return home. They had first gone to the splendid _bal_ in the popular garden, where they were told that the thousand elegant women they saw there dancing were all bad women, and that nearly all of them came to those places alone, as they had nothing to pay, but were all let in free, so as to make the men come who had to pay. This idea had tickled Jim and the Doctor very much, for, although they were from the wilderness, they could look a good way into a thing which was perfectly clear. It was a splendid sight for them, and, after strolling about a while, and seeing all that could be seen, they had turned their attention to the "_Bal Masqué_" in the _Grand Opera_. Here they had been overwhelmed with the splendour of the scene, and astonished at its novelty, and the modes of the women who, Jim said, "were all ashamed to show their faces," and whose strange manoeuvres had added a vast deal to the fund of his objections to Frenchwomen, and which he said had constantly been accumulating ever since he first saw so many of them kissing the ends of little dogs' noses, and pretty little children on their foreheads. His mind here ran upon kissing, of which he had seen some the night before, and which he had often observed in the exhibition rooms and in the streets. He had laughed, he said, to see Frenchmen kiss each other on both cheeks; and he had observed that, when gentlemen kiss ladies, they kiss them on the forehead: he was not quite sure that they would do so in the dark, however. "In London always kiss em on the mouth; ladies kiss em Indians heap, and hug em too: in France ladies no kiss em--no like em--no good."
In speaking of the _bal_ in the gardens, "he didn't see anything so very bad in that, but as for the masquerade, he looked upon it as a very immoral thing that so many thousands of ladies should come there and be ashamed to show their faces, and have the privilege of picking out just such men as they liked to go with them, and then take hold of their arms, as he said he repeatedly saw them, and lead them out." Amongst the Indians, he said, they had a custom much like that to be sure, but it was only given once a-year, and it was then only for the young married men to lend their wives to the old ones: this was only one night in the year, and it was a mark of respect that the young married men were willing to pay to the old warriors and chiefs, and the young married women were willing to agree to it because it pleased their husbands. On those occasions, he said, "none are admitted into the ring but old married men, and then the young married woman goes around and touches on the left shoulder the one who she wishes to follow her into the bushes, and she does it without being ashamed and obliged to cover her face."