It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had introduced, respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all of them, and they came before the master of the gods to proffer a complaint against Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good ladies with an excess of ardor.  The chorus, in quaint, dolorous tones, broken by silences full of pantomimic admissions, caused great amusement.  A neat phrase went the round of the house:  “The cuckolds’ chorus, the cuckolds’ chorus,” and it “caught on,” for there was an encore.  The singers’ heads were droll; their faces were discovered to be in keeping with the phrase, especially that of a fat man which was as round as the moon.  Meanwhile Vulcan arrived in a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had slipped away three days ago.  The chorus resumed their plaint, calling on Vulcan, the god of the cuckolds.  Vulcan’s part was played by Fontan, a comic actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role of the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith, fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all the rest of it.  A woman’s voice cried in a very high key, “Oh, isn’t he ugly?” and all the ladies laughed and applauded.

Then followed a scene which seemed interminable.  Jupiter in the course of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the Council of Gods in order to submit thereto the deceived husband’s requests.  And still no Nana!  Was the management keeping Nana for the fall of the curtain then?  So long a period of expectancy had ended by annoying the public.  Their murmurings began again.

“It’s going badly,” said Mignon radiantly to Steiner.  “She’ll get a pretty reception; you’ll see!”

At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven apart and Venus appeared.  Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for her eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess’s white tunic and with her light hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down to the footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of greeting for the public and struck up her grand ditty: 

“When Venus roams at eventide.”

From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over the house.  Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave’s part?  Never had a more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less art.  Her manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like a squirt.  Nay, more, she didn’t even know how to deport herself on the stage:  she thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her whole body to and fro in a manner which struck the audience as unbecoming and disagreeable.  Cries of “Oh, oh!” were already rising in the pit and the cheap places.  There was a sound of whistling, too, when a voice in the stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel, cried out with great conviction: 

“That’s very smart!”