his moment, however, was
counting on the success of a new melodramatic comedy by M. du Bruel, a
young author who, after working in collaboration with divers
celebrities, had now produced a piece professedly entirely his own. It
had been specially composed for the leading lady, a young actress who
began her stage career as a supernumerary at the Gaite, and had been
promoted to small parts for the last twelvemonth. But though Mlle.
Florine's acting had attracted some attention, she obtained no
engagement, and the Panorama accordingly had carried her off. Coralie,
another actress, was to make her _debut_ at the same time.

Lucien was amazed at the power wielded by the press. "This gentleman
is with me," said Etienne Lousteau, and the box-office clerks bowed
before him as one man.

"You will find it no easy matter to get seats," said the head-clerk.
"There is nothing left now but the stage box."

A certain amount of time was wasted in controversies with the
box-keepers in the lobbies, when Etienne said, "Let us go behind
the scenes; we will speak to the manager, he will take us into the
stage-box; and besides, I will introduce you to Florine, the heroine
of the evening."

At a sign from Etienne Lousteau, the doorkeeper of the orchestra took
out a little key and unlocked a door in the thickness of the wall.
Lucien, following his friend, went suddenly out of the lighted
corridor into the black darkness of the passage between the house and
the wings. A short flight of damp steps surmounted, one of the
strangest of all spectacles opened out before the provincial poet's
eyes. The height of the roof, the slenderness of the props, the
ladders hung with Argand lamps, the atrocious ugliness of scenery
beheld at close quarters, the thick paint on the actors' faces, and
their outlandish costumes, made of such coarse materials, the stage
carpenters in greasy jackets, the firemen, the stage manager strutting
about with his hat on his head, the supernumeraries sitting among the
hanging back-scenes, the ropes and pulleys, the heterogeneous
collection of absurdities, shabby, dirty, hideous, and gaudy, was
something so altogether different from the stage seen over the
footlights, that Lucien's astonishment knew no bounds. The curtain was
just about to fall on a good old-fashioned melodrama entitled _Bertram_,
a play adapted from a tragedy by Maturin which Charles Nodier,
together with Byron and Sir Walter Scott, held in the highest est