s with all the pleasures of Paris, its little
sputterings, sharp and quick like the breaths drawn by a consumptive,
accompanying the movement of opened fans. And then, too, _ennui_, a
gloomy _ennui_, the _ennui_ of seeing the same faces always in the
same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of
fashionable gatherings which ends by establishing in Paris each winter
a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than that of the
provinces themselves.

Maranne observed this ill-humour, this lassitude of the public, and
thinking of all the changes which the success of his play might bring
about in his simple life, he asked himself, full of a great anxiety,
what he could do to bring his ideas home to those thousands of people,
to pluck them away from their preoccupation, and to send through
this crowd a single current which should draw to himself those absent
glances, those minds of every different calibre, so difficult to move to
unison. Instinctively his eyes sought friendly faces, a box facing the
stage occupied by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the younger girls seated
in the front, Aline and the father in the row behind--a charming family
group, like a bouquet wet with dew amid a display of artificial flowers.
And while all Paris was disdainfully asking, "Who are those people
there?" the poet instrusted his fate to those little fairy hands, new
gloved for the occasion, which very soon would boldly give the signal
for applause.

The curtain is going up! Maranne has barely time to spring into the
wings; and suddenly he hears as from far, very far away, the first words
of his play, which rise, like a flight of timid birds, into the silence
and immensity of the theatre. A terrible moment. Where should he go?
What should he do? Remain there leaning against a wing, with straining
ear and beating heart? Encourage the actors when he himself stood in so
much need of encouragement? He prefers rather to look the peril in the
face; and by the little door communicating with the corridor behind the
boxes he slips out to a corner box, which he orders to be opened for him
softly. "Sh! It is I." Some one is seated in the shadow--a woman, she
whom all Paris knows and who is hiding herself from the public gaze.
Andre sits down by her side, and so, close to one another, mother and
son tremblingly watch the progress of the play.

It astonished the audience at first. This Theatre des Nouveautes,
situated in the ver