ifficulty in finding seats, and had to be
content with a place behind a pillar whence they could see only half of
the platform, then occupied by a superb person in black coat and yellow
gloves, curled and waxed and oiled, who was singing in a vibrating
voice--

Mes beaux lions aux crins dores,
Du sang des troupeaux alteres,
Halte la!--Je fais sentinello!

[My proud lions with golden manes
Who thirst for the blood of my flocks,
Stand back!--I am on guard!]

The audience--small tradesmen of the quarter with their wives and
daughters-seemed highly enthusiastic: especially the women. He
represented so perfectly the ideal of the shopkeeper imagination, that
magnificent shepherd of the desert, who addressed lions with such an
air of authority and tended his flocks in full evening dress. And
so, despite their bourgeois bearing, their modest costumes and their
expressionless shop-girl smiles, all those women, made up their little
mouths to be caught by the hook of sentiment, and cast languishing
glances upon the singer. It was truly comical to see that glance at the
platform suddenly change and become contemptuous and fierce as it fell
upon the husband, the poor husband tranquilly drinking a glass of beer
opposite his wife: "You would never be capable of doing sentry duty
in the very teeth of lions, and in a black coat too, and with yellow
gloves!"

And the husband's eye seemed to reply:

"Ah! 'dame', yes, he's quite a dashing buck, that fellow."

Being decidedly indifferent to heroism of that stamp, Risler and
Sigismond were drinking their beer without paying much attention to the
music, when, at the end of the song, amid the applause and cries and
uproar that followed it, Pere Planus uttered an exclamation:

"Why, that is odd; one would say--but no, I'm not mistaken. It is he,
it's Delobelle!"

It was, in fact, the illustrious actor, whom he had discovered in the
front row near the platform. His gray head was turned partly away from
them. He was leaning carelessly against a pillar, hat in hand, in his
grand make-up as leading man: dazzlingly white linen, hair curled with
the tongs, black coat with a camellia in the buttonhole, like the
ribbon of an order. He glanced at the crowd from time to time with a
patronizing air: but his eyes were most frequently turned toward the
platform, with encouraging little gestures and smiles and pretended
applause, address