They were silent for a second or two. They were sitting in a little group on a bench and some rustic chairs in the corner of a scenic garden, which was standing ready to be put in position as it would be used in the opening act the same evening. In the middle of this group Fontan and Prullière were listening to Rose Mignon, to whom the manager of the Folies-Dramatique Theatre had been making magnificent offers. But a voice was heard shouting: “The duchess! Saint-Firmin! The duchess and Saint-Firmin are wanted!” Only when the call was repeated did Prullière remember that he was Saint-Firmin! Rose, who was playing the Duchess Helene, was already waiting to go on with him while old Bosc slowly returned to his seat, dragging one foot after the other over the sonorous and deserted boards. Clarisse offered him a place on the bench beside her. “What’s he bawling like that for?” she said in allusion to Bordenave. “Things will be getting rosy soon! A piece can’t be put on nowadays without its getting on his nerves.” Bosc shrugged his shoulders; he was above such storms. Fontan whispered: “He’s afraid of a fiasco. The piece strikes me as idiotic.” Then he turned to Clarisse and again referred to what Rose had been telling them: “D’you believe in the offers of the Folies people, eh? Three hundred francs an evening for a hundred nights! Why not a country house into the bargain? If his wife were to be given three hundred francs Mignon would chuck my friend Bordenave and do it jolly sharp too!” Clarisse was a believer in the three hundred francs. That man Fontan was always picking holes in his friends’ successes! Just then Simonne interrupted her. She was shivering with cold. Indeed, they were all buttoned up to the ears and had comforters on, and they looked up at the ray of sunlight which shone brightly above them but did not penetrate the cold gloom of the theater. In the streets outside there was a frost under a November sky. “And there’s no fire in the greenroom!” said Simonne. “It’s disgusting; he IS just becoming a skinflint! I want to be off; I don’t want to get seedy.” “Silence, I say!” Bordenave once more thundered.