‘La Petite Loge’ is just as characteristic. What one sees is the inside of an opera-box, of which the tenants are a couple of bachelors of fashion. A dance is over, on the stage, and a girl who has taken part in it has been brought into the box, to be encouraged--to be touched under the chin. And here is an epitome of Restif’s story. A Prince, struck with the beauty of a ragged little child in the street, determined that she should be educated--pensioned her and her mother. Soon, however, busied with the greatest business of his class and day--‘occupied with intrigue,’ the story-teller tells us--he forgot his little protégée. She had her money regularly--all that she was promised--but he was too busy to think of her. Then, one night, at the Opera, smitten with the charm of a new dancer, he inquired who the dancer was, and ordered her to be brought to him. As soon as she was in the box, ‘Il lui passa sous le menton une main un peu libre’; but then it was disclosed to him that she was the child he had been struck with. Coulon, the famous dancing-master, had by this time taught her to some purpose. As for her future, her mother--an ancestress, I take it, of Halévy’s ‘Madame Cardinal’--had already a register of one hundred and twenty pages, filled with the propositions of the Court and the town. ‘Sa mère se reservait le droit de les comparer,’--for nothing, it seems, even by a Madame Cardinal, should be done in a hurry. Well, among the girl’s many lovers there was one who was unselfish. What did he want but to marry her! The Prince--not minded now to be outdone in chivalry--generously urged that he should be accepted, and Isabelle was glad to consent. But the King ordered the lover’s arrest, and the young people were separated. The girl lived prudently, in London and in Paris. She and her art were admired; but she died of a sudden illness. ‘Her young lover was in absolute despair, and the Prince, her protector, wept for her.’ In the ‘Sortie de l’Opéra’ we see the elegant and famous crowd that surged out of the theatre after a performance long looked forward to. ‘Gluck’s new Operas--it is essential to see them,’ said a writer who knew what it was that a fashionable woman could not afford to neglect. The ‘all Paris’ of the day was there; and at the end, when the crowd was in the lobbies, and the _aboyeur_ was calling the carriages, and the flower-girl was a messenger of intrigue--that was the moment that gave birth to plans for dainty suppers eaten away from home, the time when ‘abbés without a family learned the secret of how they might belong to all.’ What a bustle of flirtation! What a passing about of love-letters! The elegance of the scene must make amends, as best it can, for its light-hearted naughtiness.