A new kind of so-called music is highly regarded in Paris at present. It’s described as “music for laughs”. It comes very cheap, like griddle-cakes from the pâtissiers of the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. You can get it, if you wish, for six sous, or four sous, or even two sous. It has to be sung by people with no voice and no knowledge of music, and accompanied by pianists with no fingers and no knowledge of music, and it is popular with people of idiosyncratic temperament who take pride in having no knowledge of either French or music.

You can imagine how much in demand it is. The number of theatres attracting passers-by with this sort of music is increasing daily—both intra muros and extra muros. Its admirers don’t even bother to take precautions before going. They make no attempt to conceal themselves: even if the performances took place in broad daylight, I do believe, God forgive me, they would go without a moment’s hesitation. What’s more, even some of our concert halls are now putting on music for laughs. But it’s been observed that the audience at these concerts always remains very serious and only the singers seem to find anything to laugh about. I say “seem to”, because these poor people are generally as melancholic as Triboulet.

One of them, who had sung music for laughs all his life without a single moment’s enjoyment, died of boredom last year. Another has just become a professor of philosophy, I’m told. One alone is said to be luckier than his rivals. He lives enveloped in the esteem and consideration merited by the immense fortune amassed through his business as an undertaker. But this happy man enjoys himself so much that he no longer sings.

As evidence of the triumph of music for laughs and the incontestable influence it exerts, the Opéra-Comique decided to use it to make its patrons a little more serious. It had heard about the song The Snake Man which had been performed with such success at the Concerts de Paris, and about a comedy entitled The Two Englishmen which had a great many performances at the Odéon twenty-eight or thirty years ago, and also about two or three vaudevilles on the same subject.