ont
seat of her carriage? Well, he's a viscount who bears a fine old name;
he's her first gentleman of the bed-chamber; does all her business with
the newspapers; carries messages of peace or war in the morning to the
director of the Opera; and takes charge of the applause which salutes
her as she enters or leaves the stage."

"Well, well, my good friends, that's the finishing touch! I see now that
I knew nothing of the ways of Paris."

"At any rate, you are learning what you can see in ten minutes in the
Passage de l'Opera," said Bixiou. "Look there."

Two persons, a man and a woman, came out of the Passage at that
moment. The woman was neither plain nor pretty; but her dress had that
distinction of style and cut and color which reveals an artist; the man
had the air of a singer.

"There," said Bixiou, "is a baritone and a second danseuse. The baritone
is a man of immense talent, but a baritone voice being only an accessory
to the other parts he scarcely earns what the second danseuse earns. The
danseuse, who was celebrated before Taglioni and Ellsler appeared, has
preserved to our day some of the old traditions of the character dance
and pantomime. If the two others had not revealed in the art of dancing
a poetry hitherto unperceived, she would have been the leading talent;
as it is, she is reduced to the second line. But for all that, she
fingers her thirty thousand francs a year, and her faithful friend is
a peer of France, very influential in the Chamber. And see! there's a
danseuse of the third order, who, as a dancer, exists only through
the omnipotence of a newspaper. If her engagement were not renewed the
ministry would have one more journalistic enemy on its back. The corps
de ballet is a great power; consequently it is considered better form
in the upper ranks of dandyism and politics to have relations with
dance than with song. In the stalls, where the habitues of the Opera
congregate, the saying 'Monsieur is all for singing' is a form of
ridicule."

A short man with a common face, quite simply dressed, passed them at
this moment.

"There's the other half of the Opera receipts--that man who just
went by; the tenor. There is no longer any play, poem, music, or
representation of any kind possible unless some celebrated tenor can
reach a certain note. The tenor is love, he is the Voice that touches
the heart, that vibrates in the soul, and his value is reckoned at a
much higher salary than that of a min