“Take your places, young ladies!” cries Mme. Merante. The girls place themselves at the bar, and holding it now with the right hand and now with the left, twist and dislocate their bodies in every possible fashion. This is only a preparation for the lesson proper. After these exercises, the teacher calls the pupils into the middle of the room, and then begin the figures and pirouettes. If our heroine is ambitious, she will not be content with the lesson alone, but undertake in a corner by herself a number of intricate and peculiar dislocations during the intervals of repose. The lesson is over. It is 11 o’clock. The girls hurry to their dressing-rooms to change their linen, after which they breakfast in company on sardines, radishes, sour apples, gossip and fried potatoes. At noon the bell rings for rehearsal. The girls have to come down on the stage, and finish their breakfast while the stage manager calls out the names and the ballet master talks to the composer. The rehearsal drags along until 4 o’clock. Then the girls climb up again to their dressing-room, put on their ordinary clothing, and leave the theatre. It is 5 o’clock by the time they reach their homes, where their mothers, worthy _concierges_ or washerwomen, are waiting for their daughters to peel the potatoes for dinner. They have only time to wash, to hurry through their dinner, and return to the opera in time for the first act. A _coryphee_, for instance, will play a page in the first act, appear in the second, and take part in the ballet in the third. During the fourth act she remains in her dressing-room, and does a little crochet, but hardly has she done a few points before the call man’s voice is heard in the lobbies: “Ladies, the fourth act is finished.” She changes her costume, scampers down the stairs, and rushes upon the stage. The curtain falls. The _coryphee_ regains her dressing-room, puts on her ordinary clothes, and leaves the theatre. It is nearly 1 o’clock when she reaches her home, and, after eating a bit of bread and cheese while she undresses, she creeps into her narrow bed. Her day’s work is over. Hard Labor for Girls. Indeed, there is but little poetry in the existence of the smiling and light-footed dancers whose pirouettes afford so much pleasure to the old gentlemen in the orchestra stalls. They begin often at the age of 5 or 6 in the _class des petites_, and then every day in the year they practice and toil and chatter and caper until from _rats_ they become successful _figurantes_ at the rate of one franc a night, members of the first and second quadrilles, _coryphees_ and _sujets_. Then at the end of their first three years’ engagement begins a period of bitter grief. For then it often happens that, instead of encouraging them and giving them a decent salary, the administration of the opera chooses its stars from among foreigners. A Borrowed Mother.