actors
who will not appear immediately treading the boards of the stage; they
must first be seen in a cloud, or they must descend the lofty stairs of
a palace, in order to give more effect to their _entree_. When the air
is finished, whatever may be the violent or affecting situation of his
character, the singer must bow to the audience in acknowledgment of
their applause. The other day, in Semiramis, after the spectre of Ninus
had sung his air, the representative of this shadowy personage made in
his ghostly costume a low reverence to the pit, which greatly diminished
the terror of the apparition.

"They are accustomed in Italy to consider the theatre merely as a large
assembly room, where there is nothing to hear but the airs, and the
ballet! I am justified in saying _that they listen to nothing but the
ballet_; for it is only when the ballet is about to begin, that silence
is called for in the pit: and what is this ballet but a masterpiece of
bad taste? There is nothing amusing in the dancing save the comic part
of it; the grotesque figures alone afford entertainment, being indeed a
good specimen of caricature. I have seen Gengis-Kan in a ballet, all
covered with ermine, and full of fine sentiments; for he ceded his crown
to the child of a king whom he had conquered, and lifted him up in the
air upon one foot; a new mode of establishing a monarch upon his throne.
I have also seen the sacrifice of Curtius formed into a ballet of three
acts, with divertisements. Curtius, in the dress of an Arcadian
shepherd, danced for a considerable time with his mistress; then
mounting a real horse in the middle of the stage, he plunged into the
gulf of fire, made of yellow satin and gilt paper, which looked more
like a fancy riding habit than an abyss. In fact, I have seen the whole
of Roman history from Romulus to Caesar, compressed into a ballet."

"What you say is true," replied Prince Castel-Forte, mildly; "but you
have only spoken of music and dancing, which do not comprise what we
understand by the drama of any country." "It is much worse," interrupted
the Count d'Erfeuil, "when tragedies are represented, or dramas that are
not termed _dramas that end happily_: they unite more horrors in the
course of five acts, than the imagination could form a picture of. In
one piece of this kind, the lover kills the brother of his mistress in
the second act; in the third he blows out the brains of his mistress
herself upon the stage; her