. My pleasure was in
Mme. Nathalie's figure when she came in dressed to go out to vespers
across the _place_. The two foolish old cronies are over their wine,
talking of the beauty of the women on the Ionian coast; you hear the
church bell in the distance. It was the quiet felicity of the old
lady's dress that used to charm me; the Comedie Francaise was in every
fold of it. She wore a large black silk mantilla, of a peculiar cut,
which looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out of some old
wardrobe where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet,
adorned with handsome black silk loops and bows. Her big pale face had
a softly frightened look, and in her hand she carried her neatly kept
breviary. The extreme suggestiveness, and yet the taste and temperance
of this costume, seemed to me inimitable; the bonnet alone, with its
handsome, decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming to see. It expressed
all the rest, and you saw the excellent, pious woman go pick her steps
churchward among the puddles, while Jeannette, the cook, in a high
white cap, marched before her in sabots, with a lantern.

Such matters are trifles, but they are representative trifles, and they
are not the only ones that I remember. It used to please me, when I had
squeezed into my stall--the stalls at the Francais are extremely
uncomfortable--to remember of how great a history the large, dim
_salle_ around me could boast: how many great things had happened
there; how the air was thick with associations. Even if I had never
seen Rachel, it was something of a consolation to think that those very
footlights had illumined her finest moments, and that the echoes of her
mighty voice were sleeping in that dingy dome. From this to musing upon
the "traditions" of the place, of which I spoke just now, was of course
but a step. How were they kept? by whom, and where? Who trims the
undying lamp and guards the accumulated treasure? I never found out--by
sitting in the stalls; and very soon I ceased to care to know. One may
be very fond of the stage, and yet care little for the green room; just
as one may be very fond of pictures and books, and yet be no frequenter
of studios and authors' dens. They might pass on the torch as they
would behind the scenes; so long as, during my time, they didn't let it
drop, I made up my mind to be satisfied. And that one could depend upon
their not letting it drop became a part of the customary comfort of
Parisian life. It be