odel, who had not been
able to renounce even for that day his eccentricities of costume, and
strutted in a black velvet cape and the boots of an equerry. Oh, how
sad, tired, and old they seemed in the gray light of that winter
morning, all those pathetic heads, graceful or laughable, which we were
only in the habit of seeing when transfigured by the prestige of the
stage. Chins had become blue-black under too frequent shaving; hair thin
and dry under the hot iron of the hair-dresser; skins rough under the
injurious action of unguents and vinegar; eyes dull, burned by the glare
of foot-lights--blinded, almost fixed, like those of an owl in the
sunlight.

[Illustration]

The women were especially to be pitied. Obliged by the occasion to rise
at a very early hour, and not having had the time for a careful and
minute toilet, they gathered in groups of four or five, chilled and
shivering in their fur mantles, muffs, and triple black veils.
Notwithstanding the hasty rouge and powder of the morning, they were
unrecognizable, and it required an effort of imagination to find in them
a memory of that sublime seraglio of the Parisian theatres, exposed
every evening to the desires of several thousand men. On all of these
charming types appeared the mark of weariness and age. Some ossified
into faded skeletons, others grew dull with an unhealthy weight of fat;
wrinkles crossed the foreheads and starred the temples; lips were livid
and eyes circled with dark rings; the complexions were particularly
frightful--that uniform tint, morbid and sickly, the work of rouge and
grease-paints. That heavy woman, with the head and neck of a farmer's
wife (one almost sees a basket on her shoulder), is the terrible and
fatal queen of grand, romantic dramas; and that small blonde and pale
creature, so faded under her laces, and who would have completely filled
a music-teacher's carrying roll, was the artless young woman whom all
the vaudevillists married at the denouement of their pieces. There were
the dying glances of the lorette in the hospital, the pose of the old
copyist of the Louvre, and the theatrical sneer.

[Illustration]

Soon the cabs drove up with the functionaries connected with the
administration of the theatre, in black hats and coats, with an official
air of sadness; young reporters, the outflow of journalism, staring at
everybody and taking notes; dramatic authors, Monday feuilletonists--in
short, all of those nocturnal beings