ting filled up, while here and there a light toilet stood out
from its surroundings, a head with a delicate profile bent forward under
its chignon, where flashed the lightning of a jewel. In one of the boxes
the tip of a bare shoulder glimmered like snowy silk. Other ladies,
sitting at ease, languidly fanned themselves, following with their gaze
the pushing movements of the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing
up in the stalls, their waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their
buttonholes, pointed their opera glasses with gloved finger tips.

It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of those
they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box, sitting side
by side with their arms leaning for support on the velvet balustrade.
Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession of a stage box on the
level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined Daguenet before anyone
else, he being in occupation of a stall two rows in front of his own.
Close to him, a very young man, seventeen years old at the outside, some
truant from college, it may be, was straining wide a pair of fine eyes
such as a cherub might have owned. Fauchery smiled when he looked at
him.

"Who is that lady in the balcony?" La Faloise asked suddenly. "The lady
with a young girl in blue beside her."

He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a woman
who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of tint, her
broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a rain of little
childish curls.

"It's Gaga," was Fauchery's simple reply, and as this name seemed to
astound his cousin, he added:

"You don't know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of Louis
Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her wherever she
goes."

La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga moved
him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her very good
looking but he dared not say so.

Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra attacked
the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and noise were on
the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first nights and never
subject to change, there were little subsections composed of intimate
friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old first-nighters, hat on
head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and kept exchanging salutations.
All Paris was there, the Paris of literature, of finance and of
pleasure. T