“I am not accustomed to rivals, sir,” Lucien answered.

“Pray don’t tell her that!” cried the manager.  “Coralie is just the girl to fling Camusot overboard and ruin herself in good earnest.  The proprietor of the Golden Cocoon, worthy man, allows her two thousand francs a month, and pays for all her dresses and claqueurs.”

“As your promise pledges me to nothing, save your play,” said Lucien, with a sultan’s airs.

“But don’t look as if you meant to snub that charming creature,” pleaded du Bruel.

“Dear me! am I to write the notice of your play and smile on your heroine as well?” exclaimed the poet.

The author vanished with a signal to Coralie, who began to act forthwith in a marvelous way.  Vignol, who played the part of the alcalde, and revealed for the first time his genius as an actor of old men, came forward amid a storm of applause to make an announcement to the house.

“The piece which we have the honor of playing for you this evening, gentlemen, is the work of MM.  Raoul and de Cursy.”

“Why, Nathan is partly responsible,” said Lousteau.  “I don’t wonder that he looked in.”

“Coralie_!  Coralie_!” shouted the enraptured house.  “Florine, too!” roared a voice of thunder from the opposite box, and other voices took up the cry, “Florine and Coralie!”

The curtain rose, Vignol reappeared between the two actresses; Matifat and Camusot flung wreaths on the stage, and Coralie stooped for her flowers and held them out to Lucien.

For him those two hours spent in the theatre seemed to be a dream.  The spell that held him had begun to work when he went behind the scenes; and, in spite of its horrors, the atmosphere of the place, its sensuality and dissolute morals had affected the poet’s still untainted nature.  A sort of malaria that infects the soul seems to lurk among those dark, filthy passages filled with machinery, and lit with smoky, greasy lamps.  The solemnity and reality of life disappear, the most sacred things are matter for a jest, the most impossible things seem to be true.  Lucien felt as if he had taken some narcotic, and Coralie had completed the work.  He plunged into this joyous intoxication.

The lights in the great chandelier were extinguished; there was no one left in the house except the boxkeepers, busy taking away footstools and shutting doors, the noises echoing strangely through the empty theatre.  The footlights, blown out as one candle, sent up a fetid reek of smoke.  The curtain rose again, a lantern was lowered from the ceiling, and firemen and stage carpenters departed on their rounds.  The fairy scenes of the stage, the rows of fair faces in the boxes, the dazzling lights, the magical illusion of new scenery and costume had all disappeared, and dismal darkness, emptiness, and cold reigned in their stead.  It was hideous.  Lucien sat on in bewilderment.

“Well! are you coming, my boy?” Lousteau’s voice called from the stage.  “Jump down.”