y little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down among
occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this swooning
murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra struck up the
small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm bubbling with
roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they were already on the
grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost rows of the pit applauded
furiously. The curtain rose.

"By George!" exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. "There's a man
with Lucy."

He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the
front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of this box
were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline's mother and the
side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light hair and an
irreproachable getup.

"Do look!" La Faloise again insisted. "There's a man there."

Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he
turned round again directly.

"Oh, it's Labordette," he muttered in a careless voice, as though that
gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though both
natural and immaterial.

Behind the cousins people shouted "Silence!" They had to cease talking.
A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches of heads,
all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to topmost gallery.
The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in Olympus, a pasteboard
Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the throne of Jupiter on the
right of the stage. First of all Iris and Ganymede, aided by a troupe of
celestial attendants, sang a chorus while they arranged the seats of
the gods for the council. Once again the prearranged applause of the
clappers alone burst forth; the public, a little out of their depth, sat
waiting. Nevertheless, La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of
Bordenave's little women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a
great scarf of the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.

"You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on," he said to
Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him. "We tried the
trick this morning. It was all up under her arms and round the small of
her back."

But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon had
just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the face nor
the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the adorable type of
ugliness peculiar to a Parisia