“You will be very lucky if someone does not fail you when it’s time to begin. On such an occasion as this, accidents always happen, sudden indispositions, just as they do at the theatre. I offered to take part, but they didn’t want me.” “But you are to prompt, you know, Monsieur Camuzard; you prompt so well!” “I am willing to prompt one play, but not three; that is too tiresome.” “I will prompt as many as you please,” said stout Dufournelle; “don’t be afraid, I am solidly built, and my breath won’t give out.” Monsieur Camuzard, seeing that the post of prompter was about to escape him, hastily rejoined: “After all, when I have got started, it won’t be any more trouble to prompt all three plays.” “Let’s rehearse, my friends, let’s rehearse, let’s not lose any more time,” said Monsieur Glumeau. “The two short pieces go well enough, but _Roderic et Cunégonde_ doesn’t go well at all. There is so much stage play. Astianax, go and get the wooden swords, so that we may rehearse the fights also.” “Do you expect much company this evening?” asked Madame Dufournelle. “Well, I should say so! A most select audience; I have invited more than a hundred people, more or less; journalists, artists; I don’t count the people of the village and the neighborhood, who come to see the play. When I don’t allow them to enter, they raise the devil; they besiege the place and break down my trellis.” “They represent the audience in the upper gallery in the theatres in Paris; they are often the best judges of the performance.” “Astianax, did you ask your neighbor, Monsieur Jéricourt, to come?” “Yes, papa, and he will bring one of his friends, a young man you would take for a tailor’s model, he is so well dressed: Monsieur Arthur de Saint-Alfred--no, I am wrong, it is Alfred de Saint-Arthur.” “Saint-Arthur! Alfred! that gentleman must be a humbug!” “I assure you, madame, that he is a very good-looking fellow; at the theatre he never sits anywhere but in the proscenium boxes!” “As he never sits anywhere but in the proscenium,” said Dufournelle, “he is necessarily a young man of very high station.” “Let’s rehearse, my friends, let us rehearse.” “But we are not all here yet, young Kingerie and Monsieur Fourriette the druggist are still missing.” “I d--d--don’t want to f--f--fight with Monsieur F--F--Fourriette!” said Mademoiselle Eolinde; “he always hits me on the f--f--fingers with his sword.” “The trouble is that he puts too much action into his part; these druggists are generally very warm, especially as they are almost always from the South. Why is it that the South supplies more druggists and more apothecaries than the North? That is a question I have often asked myself. What do you say upon that point, messieurs?” “It seems to me easy enough to understand,” said Monsieur Dufournelle. “It’s because sun dials are always placed in the south.” “Oh! excellent! excellent!” “I don’t understand the joke,” said Monsieur Camuzard, blowing his nose.