A new handsome curtain, new carpets, new velvet fauteuils, programmes printed on vellum, and red ribbons (also supplied by the management) in the grisly hair of the middle-aged _ouvreuses_. “I have been an _ouvreuse_ for twenty years, but never have I seen an audience so vast, so animated, so _chic_,” said one of these ladies to me as she bundled up my overcoat, pinned a ticket to it and dropped it on to the floor. “Not a peg left,” she continued. “Immediately beneath your overcoat lies the overcoat of Prince Murat. In the heap next to it is a Rothschild overcoat. And as for that other pile of overcoats in the corner, all fur-lined, all magnificent, well, they belong to ambassadors, dukes, American millionaires, English milords, famous writers, politicians, jockeys—all the great personages in the world. Thus, although it lies on the floor, your overcoat is in illustrious company.” After warning me that no one would be admitted into the theatre when the curtain had risen, the _ouvreuse_ showed me to my seat, held out her hand, was rewarded, and left me free to admire the jewels, feathers, dresses and coiffures of _le Tout Paris_. All eyes—or rather opera-glasses—on the box occupied by Madame Rostand and her two sons. In another box, M. Briand, the Prime Minister. In the stalls, Academicians, generals, playwrights, critics, newspaper proprietors, aviators, financiers, leading actors and actresses. Everyone afoot, or rather on tip-toe, gossiping, laughing, singling out celebrities with their glasses. But at ten minutes to nine o’clock the three traditional thuds made by a mallet behind the curtain (the signal in French theatres that the play is about to begin) caused a hush. Everyone sat down. “_Chantecler_ at last,” said, emotionally, a lady behind me. The curtain rose two or three inches. “_Pas encore, pas encore_,” cried a voice. Consternation, dismay of _le Tout Paris_; was the play again to be postponed, was it true that M. Rostand had taken that 9.39 train, and that Madame Simone had “sensationally” disappeared, and that M. Guitry—— “_Pas encore, pas encore!_” But it was—thank heaven—only the voice of M. Jean Coquelin who appeared in the front of the stalls in a dress-suit, mounted a footstool and recited the prologue to M. Rostand’s fantastic, symbolical _chef-d’œuvre_. It was a delightfully humorous description of the feathered inhabitants of a farm-yard; and as M. Jean Coquelin continued to harangue the audience eloquently from his footstool, the animals were heard becoming impatient on the hidden stage.