The great critics did not disdain to attend these informal gatherings, nor to write columns of serious criticism on the subject in their papers.
At the hour when all Paris takes its aperitif the "4 z'Arts" became the meeting-place of the painters, poets, and writers of the day. Montmartre gradually replaced the old Latin Quarter; it is there to-day that one must seek for the gayety and humor, the pathos and the makeshifts of Bohemia.
The "4 z'Arts," next to the "Chat Noir," has had the greatest influence on the taste of our time,--the pleiad of poets that grouped themselves around it in the beginning, dispersing later to form other centres, which, in their turn, were to influence the minds and moods of thousands.
Another charming form of entertainment inaugurated by this group of men is that of "shadow pictures," conceived originally by Caran d'Ache, and carried by him to a marvellous perfection. A medium-sized frame filled with ground glass is suspended at one end of a room and surrounded by sombre draperies. The room is darkened; against the luminous background of the glass appear small black groups (shadows cast by figures cut out of cardboard).
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