e of the hillsides.

"Ah! this is fine--it is restful."

That was the general exclamation, a thrill of comfort, a bleat of
satisfaction accompanying each line. It was restful to the corpulent
Hemerlingue, puffing in his proscenium box on the ground floor, as in a
sty of cherry-colored satin. It was restful to tall Suzanne Bloch, in
her antique head-dress with crimps peeping out from under a diadem of
gold; and Amy Ferat beside her, all in white like a bride, sprigs of
orange-blossoms in her hair dressed _a la chien_, it was restful to her,
too.

There were numbers of such creatures there, some very stout with an
unhealthy stoutness picked up in all sorts of seraglios, triple-chinned
and with an idiotic look; others absolutely green despite their rouge,
as if they had been dipped in a bath of that arsenite of copper known to
commerce as "Paris green," so faded and wrinkled that they kept out of
sight in the back of their boxes, letting nothing be seen save a bit of
white arm or a still shapely shoulder. Then there were old beaux, limp
and stooping, of the type then known as little _creves_, with protruding
neck and hanging lips, incapable of standing straight, or of uttering a
word without a break. And all these people exclaimed as one man: "This
is fine--it is restful." Beau Moessard hummed it like a tune under his
little blond moustache, while his queen in a first tier box opposite
translated it into her barbarous foreign tongue. Really it was restful
to them. But they did not say why they needed rest, from what
heart-sickening toil, from what enforced task as idlers and utterly
useless creatures.

All these well-disposed murmurs, confused and blended, began to give the
theatre the aspect that it wore on great occasions. Success was in the
air, faces became brighter, the women seemed embellished by the
reflection of the prevailing enthusiasm, of glances as thrilling as
applause. Andre, sitting beside his mother, thrilled with an unfamiliar
pleasure, with that proud delight which one feels in stirring the
emotions of a crowd, even though it be as a street-singer in the
faubourgs, with a patriotic refrain and two tremulous notes in one's
voice. Suddenly the whispering redoubled, changed into a tumult. People
began to move about and laugh sneeringly. What was happening? Some
accident on the stage? Andre, leaning forward in dismay toward his
actors, who were no less surprised than himself, saw that all the
opera-glass