"Clear the stage!" Maranne has barely time to rush into the wings; and suddenly he hears, far, very far away, the first words of his play, rising, like a flock of frightened birds, in the silence and immensity of the theatre. A terrible moment! Where should he go? What would become of him? Should he remain there leaning against a post, with ears strained and a feeling of tightness at his heart; to encourage the actors when he was so in need of encouragement himself? He prefers to confront the danger face to face, and he glides through a little door into the lobby outside the boxes and stops at a box on the first tier which he opens softly.--"Sh!--it's I." Some one is sitting in the shadow, a woman whom all Paris knows, and who keeps out of sight. Andre takes his place beside her, and sitting side by side, invisible to all, the mother and son, trembling with excitement, watch the performance. The audience was dumbfounded at first. The Theatre des Nouveautes, situated at the heart of the boulevard, where its main entrance was a blaze of light, among the fashionable restaurants and select clubs,--a theatre to which small parties used to adjourn after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama which does the same for our morals. Cardailhac was especially bent upon justifying his title of "manager of the Nouveautes,"[9] and since the Nabob's millions had been behind the undertaking, he had striven to give the frequenters of the boulevard some dazzling surprises. That of this evening surpassed them all: the play was in verse--and virtuous. FOOTNOTES: [9] Novelties. A virtuous play! The old monkey had realized that the time had come to try that _coup_, and he tried it. After the first moments of amazement, and a few melancholy ejaculations here and there in the boxes: "Listen! it's in verse!" the audience began to feel the charm of that elevating, healthy work, as if someone had shaken over it, in that rarefied atmosphere, some cool essence, pleasant to inhale, an elixir of life perfumed with the wild thyme of the hillsides. "Ah! this is fine--it is restful." That was the general exclamation, a thrill of comfort, a bleat of satisfaction accompanying each line. It was restful to the corpulent Hemerlingue, puffing in his proscenium box on the ground floor, as in a sty of cherry-colored satin. It was restful to tall Suzanne Bloch, in her antique head-dress with crimps peeping out from under a diadem of gold; and Amy Ferat beside her, all in white like a bride, sprigs of orange-blossoms in her hair dressed _a la chien_, it was restful to her, too.