that the stage gives to a
woman, suppose her in the midst of a perpetual carnival. In the dark
recesses of a porter's lodge, beneath the tiles of an attic roof, many a
poor girl dreams, on returning from the theatre, of pearls and diamonds,
gold-embroidered gowns and sumptuous girdles; she fancies herself
adored, applauded, courted; but little she knows of that treadmill life,
in which the actress is forced to rehearsals under pain of fines, to
the reading of new pieces, to the constant study of new roles. At each
representation Florine changes her dress at least two or three times;
often she comes home exhausted and half-dead; but before she can rest,
she must wash off with various cosmetics the white and the red she has
applied, and clean all the powder from her hair, if she has played a
part from the eighteenth century. She scarcely has time for food. When
she plays, an actress can live no life of her own; she can neither
dress, nor eat, nor talk. Florine often has no time to sup. On returning
from a play, which lasts, in these days, till after midnight, she does
not get to bed before two in the morning; but she must rise early to
study her part, order her dresses, try them on, breakfast, read her
love-letters, answer them, discuss with the leader of the "claque" the
place for the plaudits, pay for the triumphs of the last month in solid
cash, and bespeak those of the month ahead. In the days of Saint-Genest,
the canonized comedian who fulfilled his duties in a pious manner and
wore a hair shirt, we must suppose that an actor's life did not demand
this incessant activity. Sometimes Florine, seized with a bourgeois
desire to get out into the country and gather flowers, pretends to the
manager that she is ill.

But even these mechanical operations are nothing in comparison with
the intrigues to be carried on, the pains of wounded vanity to be
endured,--preferences shown by authors, parts taken away or given to
others, exactions of the male actors, spite of rivals, naggings of the
stage manager, struggles with journalists; all of which require another
twelve hours to the day. But even so far, nothing has been said of the
art of acting, the expression of passion, the practice of positions and
gesture, the minute care and watchfulness required on the stage, where
a thousand opera-glasses are ready to detect a flaw,--labors which
consumed the life and thought of Talma, Lekain, Baron, Contat, Clairon,
Champmesle. In these