resses, all the names well known at functions of the
sort, and the embarrassing promiscuousness which seats the chaste,
modest smile of the virtuous woman beside the eyes blazing with kohl and
the lips streaked with vermilion of the other kind. White hats, pink
hats, diamonds and face paint. Higher up, the boxes present the same
scene of confusion: actresses and courtesans, ministers, ambassadors,
famous authors, critics solemn of manner and frowning, lying back in
their chairs with the impassive gloom of judges beyond the reach of
corruption. The proscenium boxes are ablaze with light and splendor,
occupied by celebrities of the world of finance, decolletee, bare-armed
women, gleaming with jewels like the Queen of Sheba when she visited the
King of the Jews. But one of those great boxes on the left is entirely
unoccupied, and attracts general attention by its peculiar decoration,
lighted by a Moorish lantern at the rear. Over the whole assemblage
hovers an impalpable floating dust, the flickering of the gas, which
mingles its odor with all Parisian recreations, and its short, sharp
wheezing like a consumptive's breath, accompanying the slow waving of
fans. And with all the rest, ennui, deathly ennui, the ennui of seeing
the same faces always in the same seats, with their affectations or
their defects, the monotony of society functions, which results every
winter in turning Paris into a backbiting provincial town, more gossipy
and narrow-minded than the provinces themselves.

Maranne noticed that sullen humor, that evident weariness on the part of
the audience, and as he reflected upon the change that would be wrought
by the success of his drama in his modest life, now made up entirely of
hopes, he asked himself, in an agony of dread, what he could do to bring
his thoughts home to that multitude of human beings, to force them to
lay aside their preoccupied manner, to set in motion in that vast throng
a single current which would attract to him those distraught glances,
those minds, now scattered over all the notes in the key-board and so
difficult to bring into harmony. Instinctively he sought friendly faces,
a box opposite the stage filled by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the
younger girls in front, and behind them Aline and their father, a lovely
family group, like a bouquet dripping with dew in a display of
artificial flowers. And while all Paris was asking disdainfully: "Who
are those people?" the poet placed his des