k and renewed attention. La Faloise directed his first
glance in Gaga's direction, but he was dumfounded at seeing by her side
the tall fair man who but recently had been in Lucy's stage box.

"What IS that man's name?" he asked.

Fauchery failed to observe him.

"Ah yes, it's Labordette," he said at last with the same careless
movement. The scenery of the second act came as a surprise. It
represented a suburban Shrove Tuesday dance at the Boule Noire.
Masqueraders were trolling a catch, the chorus of which was accompanied
with a tapping of their heels. This 'Arryish departure, which nobody had
in the least expected, caused so much amusement that the house encored
the catch. And it was to this entertainment that the divine band, let
astray by Iris, who falsely bragged that he knew the Earth well,
were now come in order to proceed with their inquiry. They had put on
disguises so as to preserve their incognito. Jupiter came on the stage
as King Dagobert, with his breeches inside out and a huge tin crown on
his head. Phoebus appeared as the Postillion of Lonjumeau and Minerva as
a Norman nursemaid. Loud bursts of merriment greeted Mars, who wore an
outrageous uniform, suggestive of an Alpine admiral. But the shouts of
laughter became uproarious when Neptune came in view, clad in a blouse,
a high, bulging workman's cap on his head, lovelocks glued to his
temples. Shuffling along in slippers, he cried in a thick brogue.

"Well, I'm blessed! When ye're a masher it'll never do not to let 'em
love yer!"

There were some shouts of "Oh! Oh!" while the ladies held their fans
one degree higher. Lucy in her stage box laughed so obstreperously that
Caroline Hequet silenced her with a tap of her fan.

From that moment forth the piece was saved--nay, more, promised a great
success. This carnival of the gods, this dragging in the mud of their
Olympus, this mock at a whole religion, a whole world of poetry,
appeared in the light of a royal entertainment. The fever of irreverence
gained the literary first-night world: legend was trampled underfoot;
ancient images were shattered. Jupiter's make-up was capital. Mars was
a success. Royalty became a farce and the army a thing of folly. When
Jupiter, grown suddenly amorous of a little laundress, began to knock
off a mad cancan, Simonne, who was playing the part of the laundress,
launched a kick at the master of the immortals' nose and addressed him
so drolly as "My big daddy!" that an im