t the excitement of an approaching event.

That heavy monument called the National Academy of Music, squatted under
the black sky, exhibited to the crowd before its doors the pompous,
whitish facade and marble colonnade of its balcony, illuminated like a
stage setting by invisible electric lights.

In the square the mounted Republican guards directed the movement of
the crowds, and the innumerable carriages coming from all parts of
Paris allowed glimpses of creamy light stuff and fair faces behind their
lowered windows.

The coupes and landaus formed in line under the reserved arcades, and
stopped for a moment, and from them alighted fashionable and other
women, in their opera-cloaks, trimmed with fur, feathers, and rare
laces--precious bodies, divinely set forth!

All the way along the celebrated stairway was a sort of fairy flight, an
uninterrupted mounting of ladies dressed like queens, whose throats and
ears scattered flashing rays from their diamonds, and whose long trains
swept the stairs.

The theater was filling early, for no one wished to lose a note of the
two illustrious artists; and throughout the vast amphitheater, under the
dazzling electric light from the great chandelier, a throng of people
were seating themselves amid an uproar of voices.

From the stage-box, already occupied by the Duchess, Annette, the Count,
the Marquis, Bertin and Musadieu, one could see nothing but the wings,
where men were talking, running about, and shouting, machinists in
blouses, gentlemen in evening dress, actors in costume. But behind
the great curtain one heard the deep sound of the crowd, one felt the
presence of a mass of moving, over-excited beings, whose agitation
seemed to penetrate the curtain, and to extend even to the decorations.

They were about to present _Faust_.

Musadieu was relating anecdotes about the first representatives of
this work at the Theatre Lyrique, of its half success in the beginning
followed by brilliant triumph, of the original cast, and their manner of
singing each aria. Annette, half turned toward him, listened with that
eager, youthful curiosity with which she regarded the whole world; and
at times she cast a tender glance at her fiance, who in a few days would
be her husband. She loved him, now, as innocent hearts love; that is
to say she loved in him all the hopes she had for the future. The
intoxication of the first feasts of life, and the ardent longing to be
happy, made her trem