“What!  Has he never danced in a different style?”

“He could not have danced in a better one, for his style is perfect, and what can you want above perfection?”

“Nothing, unless it be a relative perfection.”

“But here it is absolute.  Dupres always does the same thing, and everyday we fancy we see it for the first time.  Such is the power of the good and beautiful, of the true and sublime, which speak to the soul.  His dance is true harmony, the real dance, of which you have no idea in Italy.”

At the end of the second act, Dupres appeared again, still with a mask, and danced to a different tune, but in my opinion doing exactly the same as before.  He advanced to the very footlights, and stopped one instant in a graceful attitude.  Patu wanted to force my admiration, and I gave way.  Suddenly everyone round me exclaimed,—­

“Look! look! he is developing himself!”

And in reality he was like an elastic body which, in developing itself, would get larger.  I made Patu very happy by telling him that Dupres was truly very graceful in all his movements.  Immediately after him we had a female dancer, who jumped about like a fury, cutting to right and left, but heavily, yet she was applauded ‘con furore’.

“This is,” said Patu, “the famous Camargo.  I congratulate you, my friend, upon having arrived in Paris in time to see her, for she has accomplished her twelfth lustre.”

I confessed that she was a wonderful dancer.

“She is the first artist,” continued my friend, “who has dared to spring and jump on a French stage.  None ventured upon doing it before her, and, what is more extraordinary, she does not wear any drawers.”

“I beg your pardon, but I saw....”

“What?  Nothing but her skin which, to speak the truth, is not made of lilies and roses.”

“The Camargo,” I said, with an air of repentance, “does not please me.  I like Dupres much better.”

An elderly admirer of Camargo, seated on my left, told me that in her youth she could perform the ‘saut de basque’ and even the ‘gargouillade’, and that nobody had ever seen her thighs, although she always danced without drawers.

“But if you never saw her thighs, how do you know that she does not wear silk tights?”

“Oh! that is one of those things which can easily be ascertained.  I see you are a foreigner, sir.”

“You are right.”

But I was delighted at the French opera, with the rapidity of the scenic changes which are done like lightning, at the signal of a whistle—­a thing entirely unknown in Italy.  I likewise admired the start given to the orchestra by the baton of the leader, but he disgusted me with the movements of his sceptre right and left, as if he thought that he could give life to all the instruments by the mere motion of his arm.  I admired also the silence of the audience, a thing truly wonderful to an Italian,