lanting masts in the sockets,
while others went and took frames which were leaning against the walls
of the stage and proceeded to lash them with strong cords to the poles
already in position. At the back of the stage, with a view to producing
the bright rays thrown by Vulcan's glowing forge, a stand had been
fixed by a limelight man, who was now lighting various burners under red
glasses. The scene was one of confusion, verging to all appearances on
absolute chaos, but every little move had been prearranged. Nay, amid
all the scurry the whistle blower even took a few turns, stepping short
as he did so, in order to rest his legs.

"His Highness overwhelms me," said Bordenave, still bowing low. "The
theater is not large, but we do what we can. Now if His Highness deigns
to follow me--"

Count Muffat was already making for the dressing-room passage. The
really sharp downward slope of the stage had surprised him disagreeably,
and he owed no small part of his present anxiety to a feeling that its
boards were moving under his feet. Through the open sockets gas was
descried burning in the "dock." Human voices and blasts of air, as from
a vault, came up thence, and, looking down into the depths of gloom, one
became aware of a whole subterranean existence. But just as the count
was going up the stage a small incident occurred to stop him. Two little
women, dressed for the third act, were chatting by the peephole in the
curtain. One of them, straining forward and widening the hole with her
fingers in order the better to observe things, was scanning the house
beyond.

"I see him," said she sharply. "Oh, what a mug!"

Horrified, Bordenave had much ado not to give her a kick. But the prince
smiled and looked pleased and excited by the remark. He gazed warmly at
the little woman who did not care a button for His Highness, and she, on
her part, laughed unblushingly. Bordenave, however, persuaded the prince
to follow him. Muffat was beginning to perspire; he had taken his hat
off. What inconvenienced him most was the stuffy, dense, overheated air
of the place with its strong, haunting smell, a smell peculiar to this
part of a theater, and, as such, compact of the reek of gas, of the glue
used in the manufacture of the scenery, of dirty dark nooks and corners
and of questionably clean chorus girls. In the passage the air was still
more suffocating, and one seemed to breathe a poisoned atmosphere, which
was occasionally relieved by