e, women
were sitting on benches covered with red velvet and viewing the passing
movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as though the heat had
rendered them languid. In the lofty mirrors behind them one saw the
reflection of their chignons. At the end of the room, in front of the
bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a glass of fruit syrup.

But Fauchery, in order to breathe more freely, had gone to the balcony.
La Faloise, who was studying the photographs of actresses hung in frames
alternating with the mirrors between the columns, ended by following
him. They had extinguished the line of gas jets on the facade of the
theater, and it was dark and very cool on the balcony, which seemed
to them unoccupied. Solitary and enveloped in shadow, a young man was
standing, leaning his arms on the stone balustrade, in the recess to the
right. He was smoking a cigarette, of which the burning end shone redly.
Fauchery recognized Daguenet. They shook hands warmly.

"What are you after there, my dear fellow?" asked the journalist.
"You're hiding yourself in holes and crannies--you, a man who never
leaves the stalls on a first night!"

"But I'm smoking, you see," replied Daguenet.

Then Fauchery, to put him out of countenance:

"Well, well! What's your opinion of the new actress? She's being roughly
handled enough in the passages."

"Bah!" muttered Daguenet. "They're people whom she'll have had nothing
to do with!"

That was the sum of his criticism of Nana's talent. La Faloise leaned
forward and looked down at the boulevard. Over against them the windows
of a hotel and of a club were brightly lit up, while on the pavement
below a dark mass of customers occupied the tables of the Cafe de
Madrid. Despite the lateness of the hour the crowd were still crushing
and being crushed; people were advancing with shortened step; a throng
was constantly emerging from the Passage Jouffroy; individuals stood
waiting five or six minutes before they could cross the roadway, to such
a distance did the string of carriages extend.

"What a moving mass! And what a noise!" La Faloise kept reiterating, for
Paris still astonished him.

The bell rang for some time; the foyer emptied. There was a hurrying of
people in the passages. The curtain was already up when whole bands of
spectators re-entered the house amid the irritated expressions of those
who were once more in their places. Everyone took his seat again with
an animated loo