ave been deceived by it.

Those performances were really most brilliant affairs, and an invitation
to them was only less highly prized than that to the ball which always
followed the play on November 15th, the Empress's fete-day.[65] The cost
of each performance was estimated at between twenty and thirty thousand
francs, according to the company performing. I am repeating the official
statement, though inclined to think it somewhat exaggerated. Except the
Opera or Opera-Comique, there was not then, nor is there now, a theatre
in Paris whose nightly receipts, with "the greatest success," exceed
seven or eight thousand francs. Allowing for an additional three
thousand francs for railway travelling and sundry expenses, I fail to
see how the remainder of the sum was disbursed, unless it was in
douceurs to the performers. There is less doubt, however, about the
expenses of the Chateau during this annual series of fetes. It could not
have been less than forty-five thousand francs per diem, and must have
often risen to fifty thousand francs, exclusive of the cost of the
theatrical performances, because the luxe displayed on these occasions
was truly astonishing--I had almost said appalling.

[Footnote 65: The Sainte-Eugenie, according to the Church
Calendar. In France, it is not the birthday, but the day of the
patron-saint whose name one bears, which is
celebrated.--EDITOR.]

The theatre was built on the old-fashioned principle, and what we call
stalls were not known in those days. There was something analogous to
them at the Opera and the Theatre-Francais, but they were exclusively
reserved to the male sex. Both these theatres still keep up the same
traditions in that respect. At Compiegne the whole of the ground floor,
parterre, or pit, as we have misnamed it--"groundlings" is a much more
appropriate word, perhaps, than "pittites"--was occupied by the officers
of all grades of the regiments quartered at Compiegne and in the
department. The chefs de corps and the chief dignitaries of State filled
the amphitheatre, which rose in a gentle slope from the back of the
parterre to just below the first tier of boxes, or rather to the balcony
tier, seeing that the only box on it was the Imperial one. The latter,
however, took up much more than the centre, for it had been constructed
to seat about two hundred persons. Only a slight partition, elbow high,
divided it from the rest of the tier, when