When the Opera was rebuilt, the number of representations for the season, was increased to sixty, and the subscription was at the same time raised to thirty guineas, so that the admission to a box still did not exceed the price of a pit ticket. During the second year of Catalani's engagement, however, when she obtained a larger salary than had ever been paid to a singer before, the subscription for a whole box with accommodation for six persons, was raised from one hundred and eighty to three hundred guineas. This, it will, perhaps, be remembered, was to some extent a cunning device of Taylor's; at least, it was considered so at the time by the subscribers, though the expenses of the theatre had much increased, and the terms on which Catalani was engaged, were really enormous.[79] Dr. Veron, in his interesting memoirs (to which, by the way, I may refer all those who desire full particulars respecting the management of the French Opera during the commencement of the Meyerbeer period) tells us that, at the end of the continental war, the price of the _demi-tasse_ in the cafés of Paris was raised from six to eight _sous_, and that it has never been lowered. So it is in taxation. An impost once established, unless the people absolutely refuse to pay it, is never taken off; and so it has been with the boxes at the London Opera House. The price of the best boxes once raised from one hundred and eighty to three hundred guineas, was never, to any considerable extent, diminished, and hence the custom arose of halving and sub-dividing the subscriptions, so that very few persons have now the sole ownership of a box. Hence, too, that of letting them for the night, and selling the tickets when the proprietor does not want them. This latter practice must have had the effect of lessening considerably the profits directly resulting from the high sums charged for the boxes. The price of admission to the pit being ten shillings and six-pence, the subscribers, through the librarians, and the librarians, who had themselves speculated in boxes, found it necessary in order to get rid of the box-tickets singly, to sell them at a reduced price. This explains why, for many years past, the ordinary price of pit tickets at the libraries and at shops of all kinds in the vicinity of the Opera, has been only eight shillings and six-pence. No one but a foreigner or a countryman, inexperienced in the ways of London, would think of paying ten shillings and six-pence at the theatre for admission to the pit; indeed, it is a species of deception to continue that charge at all, though it certainly does happen once or twice in a great many years that the public profit by the establishment of a fixed official price for pit tickets. Thus, during the great popularity of Jenny Lind, the box tickets giving the right of entry to the pit, were sold for a guinea, and even thirty shillings, and thousands of persons were imbecile enough