The Water Lily Ballet are in the wings on both sides, rattling away in French and German, standing upon their toes, stretching their limbs and preparing themselves for the dance. Westmael will have a solo, but she looks dejected, faint and spiritless, and a racking cough tells a sad story of the toil and weariness and excitement of the ballet. She is sick to-night. Another leans her head against a side-scene totally unmindful of what is going on in the physical pain she is suffering. Still others look weary and sad-eyed, while some are merry and voluble. But the great audience will know nothing of the aches and pains, the weariness and suffering. The strong will, the excitement and the rivalry will hide all this behind the temporary smile and the coquetry and fascinations of the dance. The ballet-master is hopping about from wing to wing with the proverbial Gallic sprightliness, which will, before the evening is over, change to utter distraction and tearing of hair at the possibility of a _faux pas_ in the ballet or the total depravity of some leading instruments in the orchestra, which will be tearing a rhythm to tatters. The orchestral prelude ceases. The stage manager casts his quick eye over the stage and gives the word. The gas man turns on the light. The bell tinkles and the curtain rises. While the banquet scene is progressing, the frightful declivity of the Lurlei Berg goes into position, and the gauzy waters of the Rhine are set, across which the moon is sending a tinsel shimmer. Undine hurries through the wing and mounts to the dizzy height of the Lurlei Berg, in the meantime holding an animated conversation with the young man below, who will gallantly help her down the sloat, below the blue waters of the Rhine, to the Stalactite Cave, which a score of busy hands are already preparing for her reception. A young man in the opposite wing is preparing to play the invisible boatman for Sir Hubert and Baptiste, while I quietly go to the bottom of the Rhine by the down-stairs route, and anticipate the arrival of the trio, who do not express any astonishment whatever at finding me in the Naiad's home, but converse with each other very much in the strain of ordinary mortals.