ary, they are inclined to grow stout; and she really began to grow
corpulent. It came so gradually that she had no idea of it until it was
too late. Bang! The downhill journey is ever a fast journey, and in
her case it was accomplished with startling rapidity. She tried every
remedy--in vain! She kept the best table in the whole town, but she
starved herself, and the more she starved, the stouter she grew.

One more year, and she was no longer a great star, and her pay was
reduced. Two more years and she was half forgotten, and her place was
filled by others. After the third year she was not re-engaged, and she
went and rented an attic.

"She is suffering from an unnatural corpulency," said the stage-manager
to the prompter.

"It's not corpulency at all," replied the prompter, "she's just puffed
up with pride."

***

Now she lived in the attic and looked out on a large plantation. In
the middle of this plantation stood a tobacco shed, which pleased her,
because it had no windows behind which curious people could sit and
stare at her. Sparrows had built their nests under the eaves, but the
shed was no longer used for drying or storing tobacco, which was not,
now, grown on the plantation.

There she lived during the summer, looking at the shed and wondering
what purpose it could possibly serve, for the doors were locked with
large padlocks, padlocks, and nobody ever went in or out.

She knew that it contained secrets, and what these secrets were, she was
to learn sooner than she expected.

A few little shreds of her great reputation, to which she clung
desperately, and which helped her to bear her life, were still left: the
memory of her best parts, Carmen and Aida, for which no successor had
yet been found; the public still remembered her impersonation of these
parts, which had been beyond praise.

Very well, August came; the street lamps were again lighted in the
evenings, and the theatres were reopened.

The singer sat at her window and looked at the tobacco shed, which
had been painted a bright red, and, moreover, had just received a new
red-tiled roof.

A man walked across the potato field; he carried a large rusty key, with
which he opened the shed and went in.

Then two other men arrived; two men whom she thought she had seen
before; and they, too, disappeared in the shed.

It began to be interesting.

After a while the three men reappeared, carrying large, strange objects,
which looked like the