do, for one splendid instant, the work of
all those steins of beer, those illimitable licks of sausage, those
boundless fields of cabbage. But it's rather pathetic."

"It's disgusting," said his wife; and at this General Triscoe, who
had been watching the actress through his lorgnette, said, as if his
contrary-mindedness were irresistibly invoked:

"Well, I don't know. It's amusing. Do you suppose we shall see her when
we go behind, March?"

He still professed a desire to do so when the curtain fell, and they
hurried to the rear door of the theatre. It was slightly ajar, and they
pulled it wide open, with the eagerness of their age and nation, and
began to mount the stairs leading up from it between rows of painted
dancing-girls, who had come out for a breath of air, and who pressed
themselves against the walls to make room for the intruders. With their
rouged faces, and the stare of their glassy eyes intensified by the
coloring of their brows and lashes, they were like painted statues, as
they stood there with their crimsoned lips parted in astonished smiles.

"This is rather weird," said March, faltering at the sight. "I wonder
if we might ask these young ladies where to go?" General Triscoe made no
answer, and was apparently no more prepared than himself to accost the
files of danseuses, when they were themselves accosted by an angry voice
from the head of the stairs with a demand for their business. The voice
belonged to a gendarme, who descended toward them and seemed as deeply
scandalized at their appearance as they could have been at that of the
young ladies.

March explained, in his ineffective German, with every effect of
improbability, that they were there by appointment of the manager, and
wished to find his room.

The gendarme would not or could not make anything out of it. He pressed
down upon them, and laying a rude hand on a shoulder of either, began
to force them back to the door. The mild nature of the editor might have
yielded to his violence, but the martial spirit of General Triscoe was
roused. He shrugged the gendarme's hand from his shoulder, and with a
voice as furious as his own required him, in English, to say what the
devil he meant. The gendarme rejoined with equal heat in German; the
general's tone rose in anger; the dancing-girls emitted some little
shrieks of alarm, and fled noisily up the stairs. From time to time
March interposed with a word of the German which had mostly deserted