ects quivering upon brass wire,
the humming-birds with their feathers ruffled; they must be cleansed and
polished, the beak in a bright red, claw repaired with a silk thread,
dead eyes replaced with sparkling pearls, and the insect or the bird
restored to an appearance of life and grace. The mother prepared the work
under her daughter's direction; for Desiree, though she was still a mere
girl, was endowed with exquisite taste, with a fairy-like power of
invention, and no one could, insert two pearl eyes in those tiny heads or
spread their lifeless wings so deftly as she. Happy or unhappy, Desiree
always worked with the same energy. From dawn until well into the night
the table was covered with work. At the last ray of daylight, when the
factory bells were ringing in all the neighboring yards, Madame Delobelle
lighted the lamp, and after a more than frugal repast they returned to
their work. Those two indefatigable women had one object, one fixed idea,
which prevented them from feeling the burden of enforced vigils. That
idea was the dramatic renown of the illustrious Delobelle. After he had
left the provincial theatres to pursue his profession in Paris, Delobelle
waited for an intelligent manager, the ideal and providential manager who
discovers geniuses, to seek him out and offer him a role suited to his
talents. He might, perhaps, especially at the beginning, have obtained a
passably good engagement at a theatre of the third order, but Delobelle
did not choose to lower himself.

He preferred to wait, to struggle, as he said! And this is how he awaited
the struggle.

In the morning in his bedroom, often in his bed, he rehearsed roles in
his former repertory; and the Delobelle ladies trembled with emotion when
they heard behind the partition tirades from 'Antony' or the 'Medecin des
Enfants', declaimed in a sonorous voice that blended with the
thousand-and-one noises of the great Parisian bee-hive. Then, after
breakfast, the actor would sally forth for the day; would go to "do his
boulevard," that is to say, to saunter to and fro between the Chateau
d'Eau and the Madeline, with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, his
hat a little on one side-always gloved, and brushed, and glossy.

That question of dress was of great importance in his eyes. It was one of
the greatest elements of success, a bait for the manager--the famous,
intelligent manager--who never would dream of engaging a threadbare,
shabbily dressed man.