medley of heads and arms which moved to and fro, their owners seating themselves or trying to make themselves comfortable or, on the other hand, excitedly endeavoring to remain standing so as to take a final look round.  The cry of “Sit down, sit down!” came fiercely from the obscure depths of the pit.  A shiver of expectation traversed the house:  at last people were going to make the acquaintance of this famous Nana with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!

Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down among occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech.  And amid this swooning murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra struck up the small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm bubbling with roguish laughter.  The public were titillated; they were already on the grin.  But the gang of clappers in the foremost rows of the pit applauded furiously.  The curtain rose.

“By George!” exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away.  “There’s a man with Lucy.”

He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying.  At the back of this box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline’s mother and the side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light hair and an irreproachable getup.

“Do look!” La Faloise again insisted.  “There’s a man there.”

Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box.  But he turned round again directly.

“Oh, it’s Labordette,” he muttered in a careless voice, as though that gentle man’s presence ought to strike all the world as though both natural and immaterial.

Behind the cousins people shouted “Silence!” They had to cease talking.  A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches of heads, all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to topmost gallery.  The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in Olympus, a pasteboard Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the throne of Jupiter on the right of the stage.  First of all Iris and Ganymede, aided by a troupe of celestial attendants, sang a chorus while they arranged the seats of the gods for the council.  Once again the prearranged applause of the clappers alone burst forth; the public, a little out of their depth, sat waiting.  Nevertheless, La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of Bordenave’s little women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a great scarf of the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.

“You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on,” he said to Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him.  “We tried the trick this morning.  It was all up under her arms and round the small of her back.”