The Petit 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 voice above a whisper when the curtain is up.

The vaudeville that follows is, to say the least of it, a perplexing performance.  It has no plot in particular.  The scene is laid in a lodging-house, and the discomforts of one Monsieur Choufleur, an elderly gentleman in a flowered dressing-gown and a gigantic nightcap, furnish forth all the humor of the piece.  What Monsieur Choufleur has done to deserve his discomforts, and why a certain student named Charles should devote