But success had suddenly thrown Mignon off his balance.  He had launched forth into extravagant courses and had given the journalist a box on the ear, an actual, a vigorous, box on the ear.  This time he had gone too far:  in the presence of so many spectators it was impossible for Fauchery to pocket such a blow with laughing equanimity.  Whereupon the two men had desisted from their farce, had sprung at one another’s throats, their faces livid with hate, and were now rolling over and over behind a set of side lights, pounding away at each other as though they weren’t breakable.

“Monsieur Bordenave, Monsieur Bordenave!” said the stage manager, coming up in a terrible flutter.

Bordenave made his excuses to the prince and followed him.  When he recognized Fauchery and Mignon in the men on the floor he gave vent to an expression of annoyance.  They had chosen a nice time, certainly, with His Highness on the other side of the scenery and all that houseful of people who might have overheard the row!  To make matters worse, Rose Mignon arrived out of breath at the very moment she was due on the stage.  Vulcan, indeed, was giving her the cue, but Rose stood rooted to the ground, marveling at sight of her husband and her lover as they lay wallowing at her feet, strangling one another, kicking, tearing their hair out and whitening their coats with dust.  They barred the way.  A sceneshifter had even stopped Fauchery’s hat just when the devilish thing was going to bound onto the stage in the middle of the struggle.  Meanwhile Vulcan, who had been gagging away to amuse the audience, gave Rose her cue a second time.  But she stood motionless, still gazing at the two men.

“Oh, don’t look at them!” Bordenave furiously whispered to her.  “Go on the stage; go on, do!  It’s no business of yours!  Why, you’re missing your cue!”

And with a push from the manager, Rose stepped over the prostrate bodies and found herself in the flare of the footlights and in the presence of the audience.  She had quite failed to understand why they were fighting on the floor behind her.  Trembling from head to foot and with a humming in her ears, she came down to the footlights, Diana’s sweet, amorous smile on her lips, and attacked the opening lines of her duet with so feeling a voice that the public gave her a veritable ovation.

Behind the scenery she could hear the dull thuds caused by the two men.  They had rolled down to the wings, but fortunately the music covered the noise made by their feet as they kicked against them.

“By God!” yelled Bordenave in exasperation when at last he had succeeded in separating them.  “Why couldn’t you fight at home?  You know as well as I do that I don’t like this sort of thing.  You, Mignon, you’ll do me the pleasure of staying over here on the prompt side, and you, Fauchery, if you leave the O.P. side I’ll chuck you out of the theater.  You understand, eh?  Prompt side and O.P. side or I forbid Rose to bring you here at all.”