So the Delobelle ladies took good care that he lacked nothing; and you
can imagine how many birds and insects it required to fit out a blade of
that temper! The actor thought it the most natural thing in the world.

In his view, the labors, the privations of his wife and daughter were
not, strictly speaking, for his benefit, but for the benefit of that
mysterious and unknown genius, whose trustee he considered himself to be.

There was a certain analogy between the position of the Chebe family and
that of the Delobelles. But the latter household was less depressing. The
Chebes felt that their petty annuitant existence was fastened upon them
forever, with no prospect of amelioration, always the same; whereas, in
the actor's family, hope and illusion often opened magnificent vistas.

The Chebes were like people living in a blind alley; the Delobelles on a
foul little street, where there was no light or air, but where a great
boulevard might some day be laid out. And then, too, Madame Chebe no
longer believed in her husband, whereas, by virtue of that single magic
word, "Art!" her neighbor never had doubted hers.

And yet for years and years Monsieur Delobelle had been unavailingly
drinking vermouth with dramatic agents, absinthe with leaders of claques,
bitters with vaudevillists, dramatists, and the famous what's-his-name,
author of several great dramas. Engagements did not always follow. So
that, without once appearing on the boards, the poor man had progressed
from jeune premier to grand premier roles, then to the financiers, then
to the noble fathers, then to the buffoons--

He stopped there!

On two or three occasions his friends had obtained for him a chance to
earn his living as manager of a club or a cafe as an inspector in great
warehouses, at the 'Phares de la Bastille' or the 'Colosse de Rhodes.'
All that was necessary was to have good manners. Delobelle was not
lacking in that respect, God knows! And yet every suggestion that was
made to him the great man met with a heroic refusal.

"I have no right to abandon the stage!" he would then assert.

In the mouth of that poor devil, who had not set foot on the boards for
years, it was irresistibly comical. But one lost the inclination to laugh
when one saw his wife and his daughter swallowing particles of arsenic
day and night, and heard them repeat emphatically as they broke their
needles against the brass wire with which the little birds were mounted:

"