tage was entered through a large
vestibule hung with curtains of grayish velvet shot with violet, and at
the top of the steps where some men in dress-clothes were talking to
ballet-girls, Vaudrey could see in the great salon beyond, blazing with
light, groups of half-nude women surrounded by men, resembling, in their
black clothes, beetles crawling about roses, the whole company reflected
in a flood of light, in an immense mirror that covered one end of the
room. Little by little, Vaudrey could make out above the paintings
representing ancient dances, and the portraits by Camargo or Noverre, a
confusion of gaudy skirts, pink legs, white shoulders, with the
ubiquitous black coats sprinkled about here and there amongst these
bright colors like large blots of ink upon ball-dresses.

Sulpice had often heard the greenroom of the ballet spoken about, and he
was at once completely disillusioned. The glaring, brutal light
ruthlessly exposed the worn and faded hangings; and the pretty girls in
their full, short, gauzy petticoats, with their bare arms, smiling and
twisting about, their satin-shod feet resting upon gray velvet
footstools, seemed to him, as they occupied the slanting floor, to move
in a cloud of dust, and to be robbed of all naturalness and freshness.

"And is this all?" the minister exclaimed almost involuntarily.

"What!" answered Granet, "you seem hard to please!"

Amongst all these girls, there had been manifested an expression of
mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in their
midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his coming
to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither. Sulpice was
pointed out. He was the cynosure of all eyes. On the divans beneath the
mirror, some young, well-dressed, bald men, surrounded--perhaps by
chance--by laughing ballet-girls, now half-concealed themselves behind
the voluminous skirts of the girls about them, and bent their heads,
thus rendering their baldness more visible, just as a woman buries her
nose in her bouquet to avoid recognizing an acquaintance.

Vaudrey, observing this ruse, smiled a slight, sarcastic smile. He
recognized behind the shielding petticoats, some of his prefects, those
from the environs of Paris, come from Versailles and Chartres, or from
some sub-prefectures, and gallantly administering the affairs of France
from the heart of the greenroom. Amiable functionaries of the Ministry
of Fine Arts also