And now let us see how they do these things in France, where the cancan nourishes and the Jardin Mabille, with its high kickers, is the temple towards which pleasure-seeking pilgrims bend when they visit their Mecca--La Belle Paris. A visitor to the dancing green-room of the Grand Opera, there, will find that at night it is brilliantly lighted, and the effect of the gas-jets is greatly increased by the numerous large mirrors which almost conceal the walls. In front of each of these mirrors stands a wooden post a little higher than one's waist, and before a dancing girl sets off, she raises one foot after the other until she places it horizontally on one of these posts, where she keeps it for some time, then quitting this position and taking hold of the post with one hand she practices all her steps, and after having in this way "set herself off," she waters the floor with a handsome watering-pot, and before the large mirrors, which reach down to the mop-board, she goes through all the steps she is about to dance on the stage. The leading dancing girls commonly wear old pumps and small linen gaiters, very loose, in order to avoid soiling their stockings or stocking-net. When the call-boy gives his first notice, they hasten to throw off their gaiters and put on new pumps, chosen for their softness and suppleness, whose seams they have carefully stitched beforehand. The call-boy appears at the door, "Mesdemoiselles, now's your time! the curtain is up!" and the flock of dancing girls hasten to the stage. Among the Parisian ballet corps one sees the strangest vicissitudes of fortune, the most wonderful ups and downs of life. Some, who yesterday were glad to receive the meanest charity of their comrades, who joyfully accepted old dancing pumps, and wore them for shoes, and faded bonnets and thrice-mended clothes, appear to-day in lace, silks, cashmeres, with coachman, valet, carriage and pair. The sufferings, the privations, the fatigue, and the courage of these poor girls ere the miserable worm, the chrysalis, is metamorphosed into the brilliant butterfly, cannot be conceived. Bread and water support the life of more than half of them; many would be glad to feel sure of it regularly twice a day. A great number who live three or four miles from the Grand Opera trudge that distance almost shoeless to their morning dancing lesson, rehearsals, and evening performances, and on their return home, long after midnight, in the summer's rains and the winter's snows, nothing buoys them up but the fond hope, often delusive, that the future has a brighter and better time in store for them.