A splendid house, crammed to the roof, notwithstanding the late period of the spring and the fashionable taste for early departure to the country; a house that Cardailhac, a declared enemy of nature and the country, endeavouring always to keep Parisians in Paris till the latest possible date, has succeeded in crowding and making as brilliant as in midwinter.  Fifteen hundred heads are swarming beneath the great central chandelier, erect—­bent forward—­turning round—­questioning amid a great play of shadows and reflections; some massed in the obscure corners of the floor, others in a bright light reflected through the open doors of the boxes from the white walls of the corridor; the first-night public which is always the same, that brigand-like tout Paris which goes everywhere, carrying those envied places by storm when a favour or a claim by right of some official position fails to secure them.

In the stalls are low-cut waistcoats, clubmen, shining bald heads, wide partings in scanty hair, light-coloured gloves, big opera-glasses raised and directed towards various points.  In the galleries a mixture of different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarrassing promiscuity which places the modest smile of the virtuous woman along-side of the black-ringed eyes, the vermilion-painted lips of her who belongs to another category.  White hats, pink hats, diamonds and paint.  Above, the boxes present the same confusion; actresses and women of the demi-monde, ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics—­these last wearing a grave air and frowning brow, sitting crosswise in their fauteuils with the impassive haughtiness of judges whom nothing can corrupt.  The boxes near the stage especially stand out in the general picture brilliantly lighted, occupied by celebrities of the financial world, the women decollete and with bare arms, glittering with jewels like the Queen of Sheba on her visit to the King of Judea.  But on the left, one of these large boxes, entirely empty, attracts attention by reason of its curious decoration, lighted from the back by a Moorish lantern.  Over the whole assembly is an impalpable and floating dust, the flickering of the gas, that odour that mingles with all the pleasures of Paris, its little sputterings, sharp and quick like the breaths drawn by a consumptive, accompanying the movement of opened fans.  And then, too, ennui, a gloomy ennui, the ennui of seeing the same faces always in the same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of fashionable gatherings which ends by establishing in Paris each winter a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than that of the provinces themselves.