Now he listened from the depths of his soul to the echo of Faust’s lamentations, and the desire to die surged up within him, the desire to have done with all his grief, with all the misery of his hopeless love.  He looked at Annette’s delicate profile, and saw the Marquis de Farandal, seated behind her, also looking at it.  He felt old, lost, despairing.  Ah, never to await anything more, never to hope for anything more, no longer to have even the right to desire, to feel himself outside of everything, in the evening of life, like a superannuated functionary whose career is ended—­what intolerable torture!

Applause burst forth; Montrose had triumphed already.  And Labarriere as Mephistopheles sprang up from the earth.

Olivier, who never had heard him in this role, listened with renewed attention.  The remembrance of Aubin, so dramatic with his bass voice, then of Faure, so seductive with his baritone, distracted him a short time.

But suddenly a phrase sung by Montrose with irresistible power stirred him to the heart.  Faust was saying to Satan: 

     “Je veux un tresor qui les contient tous—­
     Je veux la jeunesse.”

And the tenor appeared in silken doublet, a sword by his side, a plumed cap on his head, elegant, young, and handsome, with the affectations of a handsome singer.

A murmur arose.  He was very attractive and the women were pleased with him.  But Olivier felt some disappointment, for the poignant evocation of Goethe’s dramatic poem disappeared in this metamorphosis.  Thenceforth he saw before him only a fairy spectacle, filled with pretty little songs, and actors of talent whose voices were all he listened to.  That man in a doublet, that pretty youth with his roulades, who showed his thighs and displayed his voice, displeased him.  This was not the real, irresistible, and sinister Chevalier Faust, who was about to seduce the fair Marguerite.

He sat down again, and the phrase he had just heard returned to his mind: 

“I would have a treasure that embraces all—­Youth!”

He murmured it between his teeth, sang it sadly in the depths of his soul, and, with eyes fixed always upon Annette’s blonde head, which rose in the square opening of the box, he felt all the bitterness of that desire that never could be realized.

But Montrose had just finished the first act with such perfection that enthusiasm broke forth.  For several minutes, the noise of clapping, stamping, and bravos swept like a storm through the theater.  In all the boxes the women clapped their gloved hands, while the men standing behind them shouted as they applauded.

The curtain fell, but it was raised twice before the applause subsided.  Then, when the curtain had fallen for the third time, separating the stage and the interior boxes from the audience, the Duchess and Annette continued their applause a few moments, and were specially thanked by a discreet bow from the tenor.