in her patent leather shoes, and the prettiest pair of ankles in Andalusia!” Oh! that Alcalde’s daughter brings your heart into your mouth; she tantalizes you so horribly, that you long to spring upon the stage and offer her your thatched hovel and your heart, or thirty thousand livres per annum and your pen.  The Andalusian is the loveliest actress in Paris.  Coralie, for she must be called by her real name, can be a countess or a grisette, and in which part she would be more charming one cannot tell.  She can be anything that she chooses; she is born to achieve all possibilities; can more be said of a boulevard actress?

With the second act, a Parisian Spaniard appeared upon the scene, with her features cut like a cameo and her dangerous eyes.  “Where does she come from?” I asked in my turn, and was told that she came from the greenroom, and that she was Mademoiselle Florine; but, upon my word, I could not believe a syllable of it, such spirit was there in her gestures, such frenzy in her love.  She is the rival of the Alcalde’s daughter, and married to a grandee cut out to wear an Almaviva’s cloak, with stuff sufficient in it for a hundred boulevard noblemen.  Mlle. Florine wore neither scarlet stockings with green clocks, nor patent leather shoes, but she appeared in a mantilla, a veil which she put to admirable uses, like the great lady that she is!  She showed to admiration that the tigress can be a cat.  I began to understand, from the sparkling talk between the two, that some drama of jealousy was going on; and just as everything was put right, the Alcalde’s stupidity embroiled everybody again.  Torchbearers, rich men, footmen, Figaros, grandees, alcaldes, dames, and damsels—­the whole company on the stage began to eddy about, and come and go, and look for one another.  The plot thickened, again I left it to thicken; for Florine the jealous and the happy Coralie had entangled me once more in the folds of mantilla and basquina, and their little feet were twinkling in my eyes.

I managed, however, to reach the third act without any mishap.  The commissary of police was not compelled to interfere, and I did nothing to scandalize the house, wherefore I begin to believe in the influence of that “public and religious morality,” about which the Chamber of Deputies is so anxious, that any one might think there was no morality left in France.  I even contrived to gather that a man was in love with two women who failed to return his affection, or else that two women were in love with a man who loved neither of them; the man did not love the Alcalde, or the Alcalde had no love for the man, who was nevertheless a gallant gentleman, and in love with somebody, with himself, perhaps, or with heaven, if the worst came to the worst, for he becomes a monk.  And if you want to know any more, you can go to the Panorama-Dramatique.  You are hereby given fair warning—­you must go once to accustom yourself to those irresistible