facade of the opera at the end of the court, I saw it, and said "I will
go in."

I took a box below, because my family-box had changed hands, hangings
and keys at least five times in ten years, and seated myself in the
background to avoid recognition, and leave undisturbed friends who would
feel in duty bound to pay fashionable court to a traveller due ten
years. I was not familiar with La Favorita, and my ear took in the new
music slowly. Great scores require of the indolent auditor a long
novitiate.

While I listened indolently to the orchestra and the singers, I examined
the boxes with considerable interest, to discover what little
revolutions a decade could bring about in the aristocratic personnel of
the opera. A confused noise of words and some distinct sentences reached
my ear from the neighboring boxes when the orchestra was silent. I
listened involuntarily; the occupants were not talking secrets, their
conversation was in the domain of idle chat, that divides with the
libretto the attention of the habitues of the opera.

They said, "I could distinguish her in a thousand, I mistrust my sight a
little, but my glass is infallible; it is certainly Mlle. de
Bressuire--a superb figure, but she spoils her beauty by affectation."

"Your glass deceives you, my dear sir, we know Mlle. de Bressuire."

"Madame is right; it is not Mlle. That young lady at whom everybody is
gazing, and who to-night is the favorite--excuse the pun--of the opera,
is a Spaniard; I saw her at the Bois de Boulogne in M. Martinez de la
Hosa's carriage. They told me her name, but I have forgotten. I never
could remember names."

"Ladies," said a young man, who noisily entered the box, "we are at last
enlightened. I have just questioned the box-keeper--she is a maid of
honor to the Queen of Belgium."

"And her name?" demanded five voices.

"She has a Belgian name, unpronounceable by the box-keeper; something
like Wallen, or Meulen."

"We are very much wiser."

From the general commotion it was easy to perceive that the same subject
was being discussed by the whole house, and doubtless in the same
terms; for people do not vary their formulas much on such occasions.

A strain of music recalled to the stage every eye that during the
intermission had been fastened upon one woman. I confess that I felt
some interest in the episode, but, owing to my habitual reserve, barely
discovered by random and careless glances the young girl thus handed