I
The third act of L'Africaine had just come to a close.
The minister, on leaving the manager's box, said smilingly, like a man
glad to be rid of the cares of State: "Let us go to the greenroom,
Granet, shall we?"
"Let us go to the greenroom, as your Excellency proposes!"
They were obliged to cross the immense stage where the stage carpenters
were busy with the stage accessories as sailors with the equipment of a
vessel; and men in evening dress, with white ties, looked natty without
their greatcoats, and with opera hats on their heads were going to and
fro, picking their way amongst the ropes and other impedimenta which
littered the stage, on their way to the greenroom of the ballet.
They had come here from all parts of the house, from the stalls and
boxes; most of them humming as they went the air from Nélusko's ballad,
walking lightly as habitués through the species of antechamber which
separates the body of the house from the stage.
A servant wearing a white cravat, was seated at a table writing down
upon a sheet of paper the names of those who came in. One side of this
sheet bore a headline reading: _Messieurs_, and the other _Médecin_, in
two columns. From time to time this man would get up from his chair to
bow respectfully to some official personage whom he recognized.
"Have you seen Monsieur Vaudrey come in yet, Louis?" asked a still young
man with a monocle in his eye, who seemed quite at home behind the
scenes.
"His Excellency is in the manager's box, monsieur!" answered the servant
civilly.
"Thank you, Louis!"
And as the visitor turned to go up the narrow stairway leading to the
greenroom, the servant wrote down in the running-hand of a clerk, upon
the printed sheet: _Monsieur Guy de Lissac_.
Upon the stage, Vaudrey, the Minister whom Lissac had been inquiring
for, stood arm in arm with his companion Granet, looking in astonishment
at the vast machinery of the opera, operated by this army of workmen,
whom he did not know. He was quite astonished at the sight, as he had
never beheld its like. His astonishment was so evident and artless that
Granet, his friend and colleague in the Chamber of Deputies, could not
help smiling at it from under his carefully waxed moustaches.
"I consider all this much more wonderful than the opera itself,"
observed his Excellency. The floor and wings were like great yellow
spots, and the whole immense stage resembled a great, sandy desert.
Vaudrey raised his head to gaze at the symmetrical arrangement of the
chandeliers, as bright as rows of gas-jets, amongst the hangings of the
friezes. A huge canvas at the back represented a sunlit Indian
landscape, and in the enormous space between the lowered curtain and the
scenery, some black spots seemed as if dancing, strange silhouettes of
the visitors in their dress clothes, standing out clearly against the
yellow background like the shadows of Chinese figures.
"It is very amusing; but let us see the greenroom," said the minister.
"You are familiar with the greenroom, Granet?"
"I am a Parisian," returned the deputy, without too great an emphasis;
but the ironical smile which accompanied his words made Vaudrey
understand that his colleague looked upon his Excellency as fresh from
the province and still smacking of its manners.
Sulpice hesitatingly crossed the stage in the midst of a hubbub like
that of a man-of-war getting ready for action, caused by the methodical
destruction and removal of the scenery comprising the huge ship used in
_L'Africaine_ by a swarm of workmen in blue vests, yelling and shoving
quickly before them, or carrying away sections of masts and parts of
ladders, hurrying out of sight by way of trap-doors and man-holes, this
carcass of a work of art; this spectacle of a great swarm of human ants,
running hither and thither, pulling and tugging at this immense piece of
stage decoration, in the vast frame capable of holding at one and the
same time, a cathedral and a factory, was rather awe-inspiring to the
statesman, who stopped short to look at it, while the tails of his coat
brushed against the fallen curtain.
From both sides of the stage, from the stage-boxes, opera-glasses were
turned upon him here and there and a murmur like a breeze came wafted
towards him.
"It is the new Minister of the Interior!"
"Nonsense! Monsieur Vaudrey?"
"Monsieur Vaudrey."
Vaudrey proudly drew himself up under the battery of opera-glasses
levelled at him, while Granet, smiling, said to the master of the chorus
who, dressed in a black coat, stood near him:
"It can be easily seen that this is his first visit here!"
Oh! yes, truly, it was the first time that the new minister had set his
foot in the wings of the Opéra! He relished it with all the curiosity of
a youth and the gusto of a collegian. How fortunate that he had not
brought Madame Vaudrey, who was slightly indisposed. This rapid survey
of a world unknown to him, had the flavor of an escapade. There was a
little spice in this amusing adventure.
Behind the canvas in the rear, some musicians, costumed as Brahmins,
with spectacles on their noses, the better to decipher their score,
fingered their brass instruments with a weary air, rocking them like
infants in swaddling clothes. Actors in the garb of Indians, with
painted cheeks, and legs encased in chocolate-colored bandages, were
yawning, weary and flabby, and stretching themselves while awaiting the
time for them to present themselves upon the stage. Others, dressed like
soldiers, were sleeping on the wooden benches against the walls, their
mouths open, their helmets drawn down over their noses like visors.
Others, their pikes serving them for canes, had taken off their headgear
and placed it at their feet, the better to rest their heads against the
wall, where they leaned with their eyes shut.
Little girls, all of them thin, and in short skirts, were already
pirouetting, and humming airs. Older girls stood about with their legs
crossed, or, half-stooping, displayed their bosoms while retying the
laces of their pink shoes. Others, wearing a kind of Siamese headdress
with ornaments of gold, were laughing and clashing together their little
silver cymbals. Awkward fellows with false beards, dressed like high
priests in robes of yellow, striped with red, elbowed past and jostled
against the girls quite unceremoniously. An usher, dressed à la
Française, and wearing a chain around his neck, paced, grave and
melancholy, amongst these shameless young girls.
The greenroom at the end of the stage was entered through a large
vestibule hung with curtains of grayish velvet shot with violet, and at
the top of the steps where some men in dress-clothes were talking to
ballet-girls, Vaudrey could see in the great salon beyond, blazing with
light, groups of half-nude women surrounded by men, resembling, in their
black clothes, beetles crawling about roses, the whole company reflected
in a flood of light, in an immense mirror that covered one end of the
room. Little by little, Vaudrey could make out above the paintings
representing ancient dances, and the portraits by Camargo or Noverre, a
confusion of gaudy skirts, pink legs, white shoulders, with the
ubiquitous black coats sprinkled about here and there amongst these
bright colors like large blots of ink upon ball-dresses.
Sulpice had often heard the greenroom of the ballet spoken about, and he
was at once completely disillusioned. The glaring, brutal light
ruthlessly exposed the worn and faded hangings; and the pretty girls in
their full, short, gauzy petticoats, with their bare arms, smiling and
twisting about, their satin-shod feet resting upon gray velvet
footstools, seemed to him, as they occupied the slanting floor, to move
in a cloud of dust, and to be robbed of all naturalness and freshness.
"And is this all?" the minister exclaimed almost involuntarily.
"What!" answered Granet, "you seem hard to please!"
Amongst all these girls, there had been manifested an expression of
mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in their
midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his coming
to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither. Sulpice was
pointed out. He was the cynosure of all eyes. On the divans beneath the
mirror, some young, well-dressed, bald men, surrounded--perhaps by
chance--by laughing ballet-girls, now half-concealed themselves behind
the voluminous skirts of the girls about them, and bent their heads,
thus rendering their baldness more visible, just as a woman buries her
nose in her bouquet to avoid recognizing an acquaintance.
Vaudrey, observing this ruse, smiled a slight, sarcastic smile. He
recognized behind the shielding petticoats, some of his prefects, those
from the environs of Paris, come from Versailles and Chartres, or from
some sub-prefectures, and gallantly administering the affairs of France
from the heart of the greenroom. Amiable functionaries of the Ministry
of Fine Arts also came here to study æstheticism between the acts.
All members of the different régimes seemed to be fraternizing in
ironical promiscuousness here, and Vaudrey in a whisper drew Granet's
attention to this. Old beaux of the time of the Empire, with dyed and
waxed moustaches, with dyed or grizzled hair flattened on their temples,
their flabby cheeks cut across by stiff collars as jelly is cut by a
knife, were hobnobbing, fat and lean, with young fops of the Republic,
who with their sharp eyes, wide-open nostrils, their cheeks covered with
brown or flaxen down, their hair carefully brushed, or already bald,
seemed quite surprised to find themselves in such a place, and chattered
and cackled among themselves like beardless conscripts, perverted and
immoral but with some scruples still remaining and less cunning than
these well-dressed old roués standing firmly at their posts like
veterans.
"The licentiates and the pensioners," whispered Vaudrey.
"You have a quickness of sight quite Parisian, your Excellency,"
returned Granet.
"There are Parisians in the Provinces, my dear Granet," replied Sulpice
with a heightened complexion, his blood flowing more rapidly than usual,
due to emotions at once novel and gay.
"Ah! your Excellency," exclaimed a fat, animated man with hair and
whiskers of quite snowy whiteness, and smiling as he spoke, "what in the
world brought you here?"
He approached Vaudrey, bowing but not at all obsequiously, with the air
of good humor due to a combination of wealth and embonpoint. Fat and
rich, in perfect health, and carrying his sixty years with the
lightness of forty, Molina--Molina the "Tumbler" as he was
nicknamed--spent his afternoons on the Bourse and his evenings in the
greenroom of the ballet.
He had a small interest in the theatre, but a large one in the
coryphées, in a paternal way, his white hair giving him the right to be
respected and his crowns the right to respect nothing. Beginning life
very low down, and now enjoying a lofty position, the fat Molina haunted
the Bourse and the greenroom of the Opéra. He glutted himself with all
the earliest delicacies of the season, like a man who when young, has
not always had enough to satisfy hunger.
Pictures that were famous, women of fashion, statues of marble and fair
flesh, he must have them all. He collected, without any taste whatever,
costly paintings, rare objects; he bought without love, girls who were
not wholly mercenary. At a pinch he found them, taking pleasure in
parading in his coupé, around the lake or at the races, some recruit in
vice, and in watching the crowd that at once eagerly surrounded her,
simply because she had been the mistress of the fat Molina. He had in
his youth at Marseilles, in the Jewish quarter of the town, sold old
clothes to the Piedmontese and sailors in port. Now it was his delight
to behold the Parisians of the Boulevard or the clubs buy as sentimental
rags the cast-off garments of his passion.
"You in the greenroom of the ballet, your Excellency?" continued the
financier. "Ah! upon my word, I shall tell Madame Vaudrey."
Sulpice smiled, the mere name of his wife sounded strange to his ears in
a place like this. It seemed to him that in speaking of her, she was
being dragged into a strange circle, and one which did not belong to
her. He had felt the same only a few days before upon his entrance into
the cabinet, on seeing a report of his marriage, his dwelling minutely
described, and a pen portrait of that Adrienne, who was the passion of
his life.
"After all," continued Molina, "Madame Vaudrey must get used to it. The
Opéra! Why, it is a part of politics! The key of many a situation is to
be found in the greenroom!"
The financier laughed merrily, a laugh that had the ring of the
Turcarets' jingling crowns.
He went on to explain to his Excellency all the little mysteries of the
greenroom, as a man quite at home in this little Parisian province, and
lightly, by a word, a gesture even, he gave the minister a rapid
biography of the young girls who were laughing, jesting, romping there
before them; flitting hither and thither lightly across the boards,
barely touching them with the tips of their pink satin-shod feet.
Sulpice was surprised at everything he saw. He did not even take the
pains to conceal his surprise. Evidently it was his first visit behind
the scenes.
"Ah! your Excellency," said Molina, delighted with his rôle of
cicerone, "it is necessary to be at home here! You should come here
often! Nothing in the world can be more amusing. Here behind the scenes
is a world by itself. One can see pretty little lasses springing up like
asparagus. One sees running hither and thither a tall, thin child who
nods to you saucily and crunches nuts like a squirrel. One takes a three
months' journey, and passes a season at Vichy or at Dieppe, and when one
returns, presto! see the transformation. The butterfly has burst forth
from its cocoon. No longer a little girl, but a woman. Those saucy eyes
of old now look at you with an expression which disturbs your heart. One
might have offered, six months before, two sous' worth of chestnuts to
the child; now, however, nothing less than a coupé will satisfy the
woman. It used to jump on your knee at that time, now every one is
throwing his arms around its pretty neck. Thus from generation to
generation, one assists at the mobilization of a whole army of recruits,
who first try their weapons here, pass from here into the regiment of
veterans, build themselves a hospital in cut-stone out of their savings,
and some of them mount very high through the tips of their toes if they
are not suddenly attacked by _the malady of the knee_."
"Malady of the knee?" inquired Vaudrey.
"A phrase not to be found in the _Dictionary of Political Economy_ by
Maurice Block. It is a way of saying that ill-luck has overtaken one. A
very interesting condition, this malady of the knee! It often not only
shortens the leg but the career!"
"Is this malady a frequent one at the Opéra?"
"Ah! your Excellency, how can it be helped? There are so many slips in
this pirouetting business! It is as risky as politics!"
Fat Molina shouted with laughter at this clumsy jest, and placing a
binocle upon his huge nose, which was cleft down the middle like that of
a hunting-hound, he exclaimed suddenly, turning towards the door as he
spoke:
"Eh! Marie Launay? What is she holding in her hand?"
Light, nimble and graceful in her costume of a Hindoo dancing girl, a
young girl of sixteen or seventeen summers, already betraying her
womanhood in the ardent glances half-hidden in the depths of her large,
deep-blue eyes, tripped into the greenroom, humming an air and holding
in her hand a long sheet of paper.
She shook, as if embarrassed by it, the broad necklace of large
imitation pearls that danced on her fine neck and fell on her
undeveloped bosom; and looking in search of some one among the crowd of
girls, cried out from a distance to a plump little brunette who was
talking and laughing within a circle of dress-coats at the other end of
the room:
"Eh! Anna, you have not subscribed yet!"
The brunette, freeing herself unceremoniously enough from her living
madrigals, came running lightly up to Marie Launay, who held out towards
her an aluminum pencil-case and the sheet of paper.
"What the devil is that?" asked Molina.
"Let us go and see," said Granet.
"Would it not be an indiscretion on our part?" asked Vaudrey, half
seriously.
The financier, however, was by this time at the side of the two pretty
girls, and asked the blonde what the paper contained, the names on which
her companion was spelling out.
Marie Launay, a lovely girl with little ringlets of fair hair curling
low down upon her forehead, smiled like a pretty, innocent and still
timid child, under the luring glances of the fat man, and glancing with
an expression of virgin innocence at Sulpice and Granet, who were
standing beside him, replied:
"That--Oh! that is the subscription we are getting up for Mademoiselle
Legrand."
"Oh! that is so," said Molina. "You mean to make her a present of a
statuette?"
"On her taking her leave of us. Yes, every one has subscribed to
it--even the boxholders. Do you see?"
Marie Launay quickly snatched the paper from her friend; on it were
several names, some written in ink, others in pencil, the whole
presenting the peculiar appearance of schoolboys' pot-hooks or the
graceful lines traced by crawling flies, while the fantastic spelling
offered a strange medley. Molina burst out laughing, his ever-present
laugh that sounded like the shaking of a money-bag,--when he ran his eye
over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and
members of the chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitués.
"Look! your Excellency--It is stupendous! Here: _Amélie Dunois_, 2
francs. _Jeanne Garnot_, 5 francs. _Bel-Enfant_--_Charles_--, 1 fr., 50
centimes. _Warnier I._, 2 francs. _Warnier II._, 2 francs. _Gigonnet_, 4
francs. _Baron Humann_, 100 francs. _The baron_!--the former prefect!
Humann writing his name down here with _Bel-Enfant_ and _Gigonnet_.
Humann inscribing above his signature--_I vill supscribe von
hundertfranc_! If one were to see it in a newspaper, one would not
believe it! If only a reporter were here now! For a choice _Paris echo_
what a rare one it would be!"
Granet examined little Marie Launay with sly glances, toying with his
black moustache the while, and the other young girl Anna, very much
confused at the coarse laughter of Molina the "Tumbler," kept turning
around in her slender fingers the aluminum pencil-case and looking at
Marie as much as to say:
"You know I can never muster up courage to write down my name before all
these people!"
"Lend me your pencil, my child," Molina said to her.
She held it out towards him timidly.
"Where the baron has led the way, Molina the Tumbler may certainly
follow!" said the financier.
He turned the screw of the pencil-case to extend the lead, and placing
one of his huge feet upon a divan to steady himself, wrote rapidly with
the paper on his knee, as a man used to scribbling notes at the Bourse:
"Solomon Molina, 500 francs."
"Ah! monsieur," exclaimed Marie Launay upon reading it, "that is
handsome, that is! It is kind, very kind! If everybody were as generous
as you, we could give a statue of Terpsichore in gold to Mademoiselle
Legrand."
"If you should ever want one of Carpeaux's groups for yourself, my
child," said Molina, "you may go to the studio in a cab to look at it,
and fetch it away with you in--your own coupé."
The girl grew as red as a cherry under her powder, even her graceful,
childish shoulders turned pink, enhancing her blonde and childlike
beauty.
Vaudrey was conscious of a strange and subtle charm in this intoxicating
circle,--a charm full of temptations which made him secretly uneasy.
There passed before his eyes visions of other days, he beheld the
phantoms of gay dresses, the apparitions of spring landscapes, he felt
the breezes of youth, laden with the scents of the upspringing grass,
the lilacs at Meudon, the violets of Ville-d'Avray, the souvenirs of the
escapades of his student days. Their short, full skirts reminded him of
white frocks that whisked gayly around the hazel-trees long ago, those
ballet-girls bore a striking resemblance to the pink and white grisettes
that he had flirted with when he was twenty.
He extended his hand in turn towards the sheet of paper to which Molina
had just signed his name, saying to Marie Launay as he did so:
"Let me have it, if you please, mademoiselle."
Granet began to laugh.
"Ah! ah!" he cried, "you are really going to write down under Monsieur
Gigonnet's signature the name of the Minister of the Interior?"
"Oh! bless me!" said Vaudrey, laughing, "that is true! You will believe
it or not as you please, but I quite forgot that I was a minister."
"It was the same with me when I was decorated," said Molina. "I would
not receive my great-coat from box-openers because I saw the morsel of
red ribbon hanging on it, and I was sure the garment was not mine. But
one grows used to it after a while! Now," and his laugh with the
hundred-sou piece ring grew louder than ever, "I am really quite
surprised not to find the rosette of red ribbon sticking to my flannel
waistcoats."
Vaudrey left Marie Launay, greatly to her surprise, and listened to
Molina's chronicles of the ballet.
Ah! if his Excellency had but the time, he would have seen the funniest
things. For instance, there was amongst the dancers a marble cutter, who
during the day sold and cut his gravestones and came here at night to
grin and caper in the ballet. He was on the scent of every funeral from
the Opéra; he would get orders for tombstones between two dances at the
rehearsals. One day Molina had been present at one of these. It seems
incredible, but there was a bank clerk in a gray coat, a three-cornered
hat upon his head and a brass buckler on his arm, who sacrificed to
Venus in the interval between his two occupations, dancing with the
coryphées; a dancer by night and a receiver of money by day. A girl was
rehearsing beside him, in black bands and skirt. Then Molina,
astonished, inquired who she might be. He was told that it was a girl in
mourning, whose mother had just died. The Opéra is a fine stage upon
which to behold the ironies and contrasts of life.
The financier might have related to Sulpice Vaudrey a description of a
journey to Timbuctoo and have found him less amused and less interested
than now. It was a world new and strange to him, attractive, and as
exciting as acid to this man, still young, whose success had been
achieved by unstinted labors, and who knew Paris only by what he had
learned of it years ago, when a law student: the pit of the Comédie
Française, the Luxembourg galleries and those of the Louvre, the Public
Libraries, the Hall of Archives, the balls in the Latin Quarter, the
holidays and the foyer of the Opéra once or twice on the occasion of a
masked ball. And, besides that?--Nothing. That was all.
The great man from Grenoble arrived in Paris with his appetite whetted
for the life of the city, and now he was here, suddenly plunged into the
greenroom of the ballet, and all eyes were turned towards him, almost
frightened as he was, on catching a glimpse of his own image reflected
in the huge mirror glittering under the numerous lights, in the heart of
this strange salon and surrounded by half-clad dancing girls. Then, too,
everybody was looking at him, quizzing him, shrinking from him through
timidity or running after him through interest. The new Minister of
State! The chief of all the personnel of prefects, under-prefects, and
secretaries-general represented there, lolling on these velvet divans in
this vulgar greenroom.
All the glances, all the whisperings of the women, the frowns of his
enemies, the cringing attitudes of dandified hangers-on, were making
Vaudrey feel very uncomfortable, when to his great relief he suddenly
observed coming towards him, peering hither and thither through his
monocle, evidently in search of some one, Guy de Lissac, who immediately
on catching sight of Vaudrey came towards him, greeting him with evident
cordiality, tinged, however, with a proper reserve.
Sulpice was not long in breaking through this reserve. He hurried up to
Guy, and seizing him by the hand, cried gayly:
"Do you know that I have been expecting this visit! You are the only
one of my friends who has not yet congratulated me!"
"You know, my dear Minister," returned Guy in the same tone, "that it is
really not such a great piece of luck to be made Minister that every one
of your friends should be expected to fall upon your neck, crying bravo!
You have mounted up to the capitol, but after all, the capitol is not
such a very cheerful place, that I should illuminate _à giorno_. I am
happy, however, if you are. I congratulate you, if you wash your hands
of it, and that is all."
"You and my old friend Ramel," answered Sulpice, "are the two most
original men that I know."
"With this difference however, Ramel is a Puritan, an ancient, a man of
marble, and I am a _boulevardier_ and a skeptic. He is a man of
bronze--your Ramel! And your friend Lissac of _simili-bronze_! The proof
of it is that I have been seeking you for half the evening to ask you to
do me a favor."
"What favor, my dear fellow?" cried Vaudrey, his face lighting up with
joy. "Anything in the world to please you."
"I was in Madame Marsy's box,--you do not know Madame Marsy? She is a
great admirer of yours and makes a point to applaud you in the Chamber.
She has prayed for your advent. She saw you in the manager's box a while
ago, and she has asked me to present you to her, or rather, to present
her to you, for I presume for your Excellency the ceremony is
modified."
"Madame Marsy!" said Vaudrey. "Is she not an artist's widow? Her salon
is a political centre, is it not?"
"Exactly. A recent salon opened in opposition to that of Madame Evan. An
Athenian Republic! You do not object to that?"
"On the contrary! A republic cannot be founded without the aid of
women."
"Ah!" cried Lissac, laughing. "Politics and honors have not changed you,
I see."
"Changed me? With the exception that I have twenty years over my head,
and alas! not so much hair as I had then upon it, I am the same as I was
in 1860."
"_Hôtel Racine! Rue Racine!_" said Lissac. "In those days, I dreamed of
being Musset, I a gourmand, and what have I become? A spectator, a
trifler, a Parisian, a rolling stone.--Nothing. And you who dreamed of
being a second Barnave, Vergniaud or Barbaroux, your dream is realized."
"Realized!" said Vaudrey.
He made an effort to shake his head deprecatingly as if his vanity were
not flattered by those honeyed words of his friend; but his glance
displayed such sincere delight and so strong a desire to be effusive and
in evidence, that he could not repress a smile upon hearing from the
companion of his youth, such a confirmation of his triumph. They are
our most severe critics, these friends of our youth, they who have
listened to the stammering of our hopes and dreams of the future. And
when at length we have conquered the future, these are often the very
ones to rob us of it! Lissac, however, was not one of these envious
ones.
"Let us go to Madame Marsy's box, my dear Guy," said Sulpice. "The more
so because if she at all resembles her portrait at the last Salon, she
must be lovely indeed."
He left the greenroom, leaning on the arm of Lissac, after throwing a
glance backward, however, at the girls whirling about there, and where
in the presence of their stiff, ancient superiors, the young
sub-prefects still hid their faces behind their opera hats. Granet with
Molina went to take leave of Vaudrey, leaving little Marie Launay
smiling artlessly because the financier, the _Tumbler_, had said to her,
in drawing down her eyelids with his coarse finger: "Will you close your
periwinkles--you _kid_?"
"Your Excellency," the banker had said, cajoling his Excellency with his
meaning glance, "I am always at your orders you know."
"To-morrow, at the Prisons' Commission, Monsieur le Ministre," said
Granet. And amid salutations on every side Vaudrey withdrew, smiling and
good-humored as usual.
In order to reach the box, Vaudrey had to cross the stage. The new scene
was set. Buddhist temples with their grotesque shapes and huge statues
stood out against a background of vivid blue sky, and on the canvas
beyond, great pink flowers glowed amid refreshing verdure. Over all fell
a soft fairy-like light from an electric lamp, casting on the floor a
fantastic gleam, soft and clear as the rays of the moon. Sulpice smiled
as he passed beneath this flood of light and saw his shadow projected
before him as upon the glassy waters of a lake. It seemed to him that
this sudden illumination, a sort of fantastic apotheosis as it were, was
like the fairy-like aureole that attended his progress.
At the very moment of leaving the greenroom, Sulpice had jostled
accidentally against a man of very grave aspect wearing a black coat
closely buttoned. He was almost bald save for some long, thin, gray
locks that hung about his huge ears, his cheeks had a hectic color and
his skull was yellow. He entered this salon in a hesitating, inquisitive
way, with wide-open eyes and a gourmand's movement of the nostrils, and
gazed about the room, warm with lights and heavy with perfume.
Sulpice glanced at him carelessly and recognized him as the man whom he
himself had superseded on Place Beauvau--a Puritan, a Huguenot, a
widower, the father of five or six daughters, and as solemn and proper
in his ordinary demeanor as a Sunday-school tract. Sulpice could not
refrain from crying out merrily: "Bless me! Monsieur Pichereau!"
The other shook his butter-colored skull as if he had suddenly received
a stinging blow on it with a switch, and his red face became
crimson-hued at the sight of Sulpice, his successor in office, standing
before him, politely holding out to him his two gloved hands.
Guy de Lissac was no longer laughing.
Their two Excellencies found themselves face to face at the foot of the
greenroom staircase, in the midst of a crowd of brahmins, dancers,
negresses, and female supernumeraries; two Excellencies meeting there;
one smiling, the other grimacing beneath the glance of this curious,
shrewd little world.
"Ah! I have caught you, my dear colleague," cried Sulpice, very much
amused at Pichereau's embarrassed air, his coat buttoned close like a
Quaker's and his little eyes blinking behind his spectacles, and looking
as sheepish as a sacristan caught napping.
"Me?" stammered Pichereau. "Me? But my dear Minister, it's you--yes, you
whom I came expressly to seek!"
"Here?" said Vaudrey.
"Yes, here!"
"Really?"
"I had something to say to you--I--yes, I wanted--"
The unlucky Pichereau mechanically pulled and jerked at his waistcoat,
then assuming a dignified, grave air, he whistled and hesitated, and
finally stammered:
"I wished to speak with you--yes--to consult with you upon a matter of
grave importance--concerning Protestant communities."
Sulpice could not restrain his laughter.
Pichereau, with his look of a Calvinistic preacher, was throwing from
behind his spectacles glowing looks in the direction where Marie Launay
stood listening to and laughing at the badinage of Molina. Some
newspaper reporters, scenting a handy paragraph, came sauntering up to
overhear some fragment of the conversation between the minister of
yesterday and him of to-day.
Guy de Lissac stood carelessly by, secretly very much amused at
Pichereau, who did not move, but rubbing his hands nervously together
was trying to appear at ease, yet by his sour smile at his successor
allowing it to be plainly seen how gladly he would have strangled
Vaudrey.
"My dear colleague," said Sulpice, gayly, "we will talk elsewhere about
your communities. This is hardly the place. _Non est hic locus!_
Good-bye!"
"Good-bye, your Excellency," replied Pichereau with forced politeness.
Vaudrey drew Lissac away, saying with a suppressed laugh:
"Oh! oh! the Quaker! He has laid down his portfolio, but he has kept the
key to the greenroom, it seems."
"It would appear," replied Guy, "that the door leading into the
greenroom may open to scenes of consolation for fallen greatness. The
blue eyes of Marie Launay always serve as a sparadrap to a fallen
minister!"
"Was the fat Molina right? To lose the votes of the majority is perhaps
the malady of the knee of ministers," said Vaudrey merrily.
He laughed again, very much amused at the irritable, peevish yet
cringing attitude of Pichereau, the Genevan doctrinaire, who sought
consolation in the greenroom of the ballet, whilst his five or six
daughters sat at home, probably reading some chaste English romance, or
practising sacred music within the range of the green spectacles of
their governess.
"But!" said he gayly, "to fall from power is nothing, provided one falls
into the arms of ballet-girls."
* * * * *
_Molina burst out laughing ... when he ran his eye over the list and
found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and members of the
chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitués._
[Illustration: IN THE GREENROOM OF THE OPERA]