endure to be deceived for the sake of
love. Was he the sort of man to commit a crime, to do something
dreadful? That was what she could not decide. She recalled his mania for
handling firearms. When she used to visit him in the Rue des Martyrs,
she always found him in his room, taking an old shot-gun to pieces and
cleaning it. And yet he never went shooting. He boasted of being a dead
shot, and carried a revolver on his person. But what did that prove?
Never before had she thought so much about him.

Nanteuil was tormenting herself in this fashion in her box, when Jenny
Fagette came to join her there; Jenny Fagette, slender and fragile, the
incarnation of Alfred de Musset's Muse, who at night wore out her eyes
of periwinkle-blue by scribbling society notes and fashion articles. A
mediocre actress, but a clever and wonderfully energetic woman, she was
Nanteuil's most intimate friend. They recognized in each other
remarkable qualities, qualities which differed from those which each
discovered in herself, and they acted in concert as the two great Powers
of the Odeon. Nevertheless, Fagette was doing her best to take Ligny
away from her friend; not from inclination, for she was insensible as a
stick and held men in contempt, but with the idea that a liaison with a
diplomatist would procure her certain advantages, and above all, in
order not to miss the opportunity of doing something scandalous.
Nanteuil was aware of this. She knew that all her sister-actresses,
Ellen Midi, Duvernet, Herschell, Falempin, Stella, Marie-Claire, were
trying to take Ligny from her. She had seen Louise Dalle, who dressed
like a music-mistress, and always had the air of being about to storm an
omnibus, and retained, even in her provocations and accidental contacts,
the appearance of incurable respectability, pursue Ligny with her lanky
legs, and beset him with the glances of a poverty-stricken Pasiphae. She
had also surprised the oldest actress of the theatre, their excellent
mother Ravaud, in a corridor, baring, at Ligny's approach, all that was
left to her, her magnificent arms, which had been famous for forty
years.

Fagette, with disgust, and the tip of a gloved finger, called Nanteuil's
attention to the scene through which Durville, old Maury and
Marie-Claire were struggling.

"Just look at those people. They look as if they were playing at the
bottom of thirty fathoms of water."

"It's because the top lights are not lit."

"Not a bit