As was proper, I arrived during the intermission, when the crowd, very elegant in appearance, was filling the lobbies. After having left my overcoat at the check room, I passed through the parterre boxes with that same sweet impatience, that same delicious anguish, which I had already experienced at the Bois; on reaching the first balcony I continued the same careful inspection of the loges. "Why is she not here?" I asked myself. Each time I failed to distinguish clearly a woman's face, whether it was because the face was slightly bent, in shadow, or cut off from view by a fan, I would say to myself: "That's Juliette!" And each time it was not Juliette at all. The play amused me; I laughed heartily at the flat jokes which constituted the essence of the piece: I enjoyed all this perverse ineptitude, this vulgar coarseness and really found in it a quality of irony which did not lack literary merit. At the love scenes I grew sentimental. During the last intermission I met a young man whom I scarcely knew. Glad of the opportunity to pour out the banalities which had accumulated in me and were pressing for an outlet, I clung to him. "An amazing thing, isn't it?" he said to me. "It is stunning, eh?" "Yes, it isn't bad!" "Not bad! Not bad!... Why that is a masterpiece, an astounding masterpiece! What I especially like is the second act. There is a situation for you, not that ... a tense situation! Why it is high comedy, you know! And the gowns! And that Judic, ah! that Judic!..." He struck his thigh and clicked his tongue: "It got me all excited, my dear! It's astonishing!" We thus discussed the merits of the various acts, scenes and actors. When we were parting: "Tell me," I asked him, "do you happen to know a certain Juliette Roux?" "Wait now! Oh, perfectly well! A little brunette, very 'chic'? No, I got mixed up. Wait now! Juliette Roux! Don't know her." An hour later I was seated at a table with a glass of soda water in front of me, in the café de la Paix where, after the theatre, used to assemble the most beautiful representatives of the fashionable world. A great many women came in and out, insolent, loud-mouthed, their faces covered with fresh layers of rice powder, their lips newly painted with rouge! At the adjoining table a little blonde lady, already aged but very animated, was speaking in a nasal voice; a brunette, farther away, was simpering with a turkey's ludicrous majesty, and with the same hand which had raked manure on the farm she held a fan, while her escort, leaning against his chair, his hat pushed back, his legs spread apart, was obdurately sucking his cane's head.