_Brava! brava!!_" Rising, she turns her back to display
her gauze _jupe elastique_, which is always exceedingly _bouffante_:
expectorating upon the stage as she retires. She thus makes way for her
lover, who, being her professional rival, she invariably detests.

It is singular that in private life the habits of the animal differ most
materially according to its sex. The male sometimes keeps an academy and a
kit fiddle, but the domestic relations of the female remain a profound
mystery; and although Professors Tom Duncombe, Count D'Orsay,
Chesterfield, and several other eminent Italian-operatic natural
historians, have spent immense fortunes in an ardent pursuit of knowledge
in this branch of science, they have as yet afforded the world but a small
modicum of information. Perhaps what they _have_ learned is not of a
nature to be made public.

_Moral Characteristics._--None.

_Reproduction._--The offspring of opera-dancers are not, as is sometimes
supposed, born with wings; the truth is that these cherubim are frequently
attached by their backs to copper wires, and made to represent flying
angels in fairy dramas; and those appendages, so far from being natural,
are supplied by the property-man, together with the wreaths of artificial
flowers which each Liliputian divinity upholds.

_Sustenance._--All opera-dancers are decidedly omnivorous. Their appetite
is immense; quantity and (for most of them come from France), not quality,
is what they chiefly desire. When not dining at their own expense, they
eat all they can, and pocket the rest. Indeed, a celebrated
sylphide--unsurpassed for the graceful airiness of her evolutions--has
been known to make the sunflower in the last scene bend with the
additional weight of a roast pig, an apple pie, and sixteen _omelettes
soufflees_--drink, including porter, in proportion. Various philosophers
have endeavoured to account for this extraordinary digestive capacity; but
some of their arguments are unworthy of the science they otherwise adorn.
For example, it has been said that the great exertions to which the dancer
is subject demand a corresponding amount of nutriment, and that the
copious transudation superinduced thereby requires proportionate supplies
of suction; while, in point of fact, if such theorists had studied their
subject a little closer, they would have found these unbounded appetites
accounted for upon the most simple and conclusive ground: it is clear
that, as most o