Lazary occupies the lowest round of the theatrical ladder. We
pay something like sixpence half-penny or sevenpence apiece, and are
inducted into the dress-circle. Our appearance is greeted with a round
of applause. The curtain has just fallen, and the audience have nothing
better to do. Mueller lays his hand upon his heart, and bows profoundly,
first to the gallery and next to the pit; whereupon they laugh, and
leave us in peace. Had we looked dignified or indignant we should
probably have been hissed till the curtain rose.

It is an audience in shirt-sleeves, consisting for the most part of
workmen, maid-servants, soldiers, and street-urchins, with a plentiful
sprinkling of pickpockets--the latter in a strictly private capacity,
being present for entertainment only, without any ulterior
professional views.

It is a noisy _entr'acte_ enough. Three vaudevilles have already been
played, and while the fourth is in preparation the public amuses itself
according to its own riotous will and pleasure. Nuts and apple parings
fly hither and thither; oranges describe perilous parabolas between the
pit and the gallery; adventurous _gamins_ make daring excursions round
the upper rails; dialogues maintained across the house, and quarrels
supported by means of an incredible copiousness of invective, mingle in
discordant chorus with all sorts of howlings, groanings, whistlings,
crowings, and yelpings, above which, in shrillest treble, rise the
voices of cake and apple-sellers, and the piercing cry of the hump-back
who distributes "vaudevilles at five centimes apiece." In the meantime,
almost distracted by the patronage that assails him in every direction,
the lemonade-vendor strides hither and thither, supplying floods of
nectar at two centimes the glass; while the audience, skilled in the
combination of enjoyments, eats, drinks, and vociferates to its heart's
content. Fabulous meats, and pies of mysterious origin, are brought out
from baskets and hats. Pocket-handkerchiefs spread upon benches do duty
as table-cloths. Clasp-knives, galette, and sucre d'orge pass from hand
to hand--nay, from mouth to mouth--and, in the midst of the tumult, the
curtain rises.

All is, in one moment, profoundly silent. The viands disappear; the
lemonade-seller vanishes; the boys outside the gallery-rails clamber
back to their places. The drama, in the eyes of the Parisians, is almost
a sacred rite, and not even the noisiest _gamin_ would raise his voic