e glance Francoise and her
son exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them both
a simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: _Pecaire!_ the local
word expressive of all pity, all affection.

* * *

Early the next morning the uproar began with the arrival of the actors
and actresses, an avalanche of caps, chignons, high boots, short
petticoats, affected screams, veils floating over the fresh coats of
rouge; the women were in a large majority, Cardailhac having reflected
that, where a bey was concerned, the performance was of little
consequence, that one need only emit false notes from pretty lips, show
lovely arms and well-turned legs in the free-and-easy neglige of the
operetta. All the plastic celebrities of his theatre were on hand,
therefore, Amy Ferat at their head, a hussy who had already tried her
eye-teeth on the gold of several crowns; also two or three famous comic
actors, whose pallid faces produced the same effect of chalky, spectral
blotches amid the bright green of the hedgerows as was produced by the
plaster statuettes. All that motley crew, enlivened by the journey, the
unfamiliar fresh air, and the copious hospitality, as well as by the
hope of hooking something in that procession of beys, nabobs, and other
purse-bearers, asked nothing better than to caper and sing and make
merry, with the vulgar enthusiasm of a crowd of Seine boatmen ashore on
a lark. But Cardailhac did not propose to have it so. As soon as they
had arrived, made their toilets and eaten their first breakfast, out
came the books; we must rehearse!--There was no time to lose. The
rehearsals took place in the small salon near the summer gallery, where
they were already beginning to build the stage; and the noise of the
hammers, the humming of the refrains, the thin voices supported by the
squeaking of the orchestra leader's violin, mingled with the loud
trumpet-calls of the peacocks on their perches, were blown to shreds in
the mistral, which, failing to recognize the frantic chirping of its
grasshoppers, contemptuously whisked it all away on the whirling tips
of its wings.

Sitting in the centre of the porch, as if it were the proscenium of his
theatre, Cardailhac, while superintending the rehearsals, issued his
commands to a multitude of workmen and gardeners, ordered trees to be
felled which obstructed the view, drew sketches of the triumphal
arches, sent despatches and messe