I am going to
have him on toast. Just you watch, my dears."

She called him very softly:

"Deutz! Deutz!"

The Baron came towards her, smiling and well-pleased with himself, and
leaned his elbows on the edge of the box.

"Tell me, Monsieur Deutz, when you met me yesterday, were you in very
bad company that you did not raise your hat to me?"

He looked at her in astonishment.

"I? I was with my sister."

"Oh!"

On the stage, Marie-Claire, hanging upon Durville's neck, was
exclaiming:

"Go! Victorious or defeated, in good or evil fortune, your glory will be
equally great. Come what may, I shall know how to show myself the wife
of a hero."

"That will do, Madame Marie-Claire!" said Pradel.

Just at that moment Chevalier made his entry, and immediately the
author, tearing his hair, let loose a flood of imprecations:

"Do you call that an entry? It's a tumble, a catastrophe, a cataclysm!
Ye gods! A meteor, an aerolith, a bit of the moon falling on to the
stage would be less horribly disastrous! I will take off my play!
Chevalier, come in again, my good fellow!"

The artist who had designed the costumes, Michel, a fair young man with
a mystic's beard, was seated in the first row, on the arm of a stall. He
leaned over and whispered into the ear of Roger, the scene-painter:

"And to think it's the fifty-sixth time that he's dropped on Chevalier
with the same fury!"

"Well, you know, Chevalier is rottenly bad," replied Roger, without
hesitation.

"It isn't that he is bad," returned Michel indulgently. "But he always
seems to be laughing, and nothing could be worse for a comedy actor. I
knew him when he was quite a kid, at Montmartre. At school his masters
used to ask him: 'Why are you laughing?' He was not laughing; he had no
desire to laugh; he used to get his ears boxed from morning to night.
His parents wanted to put him in a chemical factory. But he had dreams
of the stage, and spent his days on the Butte Montmartre, in the studio
of the painter Montalent. Montalent at that time was working day and
night on his _Death of Saint Louis_, a huge picture which was
commissioned for the cathedral of Carthage. One day, Montalent said to
him----"

"A little less noise!" shouted Pradel.

"Said to him: 'Chevalier, since you have nothing to do, just sit for
Philippe the Bold.' 'With pleasure,' said Chevalier. Montalent told him
to assume the attitude of a man bowed down with grief. More, he stuck
two tears as b