In the stalls are low-cut waistcoats, clubmen, shining bald heads, wide partings in scanty hair, light-coloured gloves, big opera-glasses raised and directed towards various points. In the galleries a mixture of different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarrassing promiscuity which places the modest smile of the virtuous woman along-side of the black-ringed eyes, the vermilion-painted lips of her who belongs to another category. White hats, pink hats, diamonds and paint. Above, the boxes present the same confusion; actresses and women of the demi-monde, ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics--these last wearing a grave air and frowning brow, sitting crosswise in their _fauteuils_ with the impassive haughtiness of judges whom nothing can corrupt. The boxes near the stage especially stand out in the general picture brilliantly lighted, occupied by celebrities of the financial world, the women _decollete_ and with bare arms, glittering with jewels like the Queen of Sheba on her visit to the King of Judea. But on the left, one of these large boxes, entirely empty, attracts attention by reason of its curious decoration, lighted from the back by a Moorish lantern. Over the whole assembly is an impalpable and floating dust, the flickering of the gas, that odour that mingles with all the pleasures of Paris, its little sputterings, sharp and quick like the breaths drawn by a consumptive, accompanying the movement of opened fans. And then, too, _ennui_, a gloomy _ennui_, the _ennui_ of seeing the same faces always in the same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of fashionable gatherings which ends by establishing in Paris each winter a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than that of the provinces themselves. Maranne observed this ill-humour, this lassitude of the public, and thinking of all the changes which the success of his play might bring about in his simple life, he asked himself, full of a great anxiety, what he could do to bring his ideas home to those thousands of people, to pluck them away from their preoccupation, and to send through this crowd a single current which should draw to himself those absent glances, those minds of every different calibre, so difficult to move to unison. Instinctively his eyes sought friendly faces, a box facing the stage occupied by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the younger girls seated in the front, Aline and the father in the row behind--a charming family group, like a bouquet wet with dew amid a display of artificial flowers. And while all Paris was disdainfully asking, “Who are those people there?” the poet instrusted his fate to those little fairy hands, new gloved for the occasion, which very soon would boldly give the signal for applause.