“What’s he bawling like that for?” she said in allusion to Bordenave.  “Things will be getting rosy soon!  A piece can’t be put on nowadays without its getting on his nerves.”

Bosc shrugged his shoulders; he was above such storms.  Fontan whispered: 

“He’s afraid of a fiasco.  The piece strikes me as idiotic.”

Then he turned to Clarisse and again referred to what Rose had been telling them: 

“D’you believe in the offers of the Folies people, eh?  Three hundred francs an evening for a hundred nights!  Why not a country house into the bargain?  If his wife were to be given three hundred francs Mignon would chuck my friend Bordenave and do it jolly sharp too!”

Clarisse was a believer in the three hundred francs.  That man Fontan was always picking holes in his friends’ successes!  Just then Simonne interrupted her.  She was shivering with cold.  Indeed, they were all buttoned up to the ears and had comforters on, and they looked up at the ray of sunlight which shone brightly above them but did not penetrate the cold gloom of the theater.  In the streets outside there was a frost under a November sky.

“And there’s no fire in the greenroom!” said Simonne.  “It’s disgusting; he is just becoming a skinflint!  I want to be off; I don’t want to get seedy.”

“Silence, I say!” Bordenave once more thundered.

Then for a minute or so a confused murmur alone was audible as the actors went on repeating their parts.  There was scarcely any appropriate action, and they spoke in even tones so as not to tire themselves.  Nevertheless, when they did emphasize a particular shade of meaning they cast a glance at the house, which lay before them like a yawning gulf.  It was suffused with vague, ambient shadow, which resembled the fine dust floating pent in some high, windowless loft.  The deserted house, whose sole illumination was the twilight radiance of the stage, seemed to slumber in melancholy and mysterious effacement.  Near the ceiling dense night smothered the frescoes, while from the several tiers of stage boxes on either hand huge widths of gray canvas stretched down to protect the neighboring hangings.  In fact, there was no end to these coverings; bands of canvas had been thrown over the velvet-covered ledges in front of the various galleries which they shrouded thickly.  Their pale hue stained the surrounding shadows, and of the general decorations of the house only the dark recesses of the boxes were distinguishable.  These served to outline the framework of the several stories, where the seats were so many stains of red velvet turned black.  The chandelier had been let down as far as it would go, and it so filled the region of the stalls with its pendants as to suggest a flitting and to set one thinking that the public had started on a journey from which they would never return.

Just about then Rose, as the little duchess who has been misled into the society of a courtesan, came to the footlights, lifted up her hands and pouted adorably at the dark and empty theater, which was as sad as a house of mourning.