Unconscious Comedians | Page 6

among the gods," replied the
landscape painter; "just as you have seen Paris in the rue Croix-des-
Petits-Champs, without knowing anything about it. What did they give
at the Opera when you were there?"
"Guillaume Tell."
"Well," said Leon, "Matilde's grand DUO must have delighted you.
What do you suppose that charming singer did when she left the
stage?"
"She--well, what?"
"She ate two bloody mutton-chops which her servant had ready for
her."
"Pooh! nonsense!"
"Malibran kept up on brandy--but it killed her in the end. Another thing!
You have seen the ballet, and you'll now see it defiling past you in its

every-day clothes, without knowing that the face of your lawsuit
depends on a pair of those legs."
"My lawsuit!"
"See, cousin, here comes what is called a marcheuse."
Leon pointed to one of those handsome creatures who at twenty-five
years of age have lived sixty, and whose beauty is so real and so sure of
being cultivated that they make no display of it. She was tall, and
walked well, with the arrogant look of a dandy; her toilet was
remarkable for its ruinous simplicity.
"That is Carabine," said Bixiou, who gave her, as did Leon, a slight nod
to which she responded by a smile.
"There's another who may possibly get your prefect turned out."
"A marcheuse!--but what is that?"
"A marcheuse is a rat of great beauty whom her mother, real or
fictitious, has sold as soon as it was clear she would become neither
first, second, nor third danseuse, but who prefers the occupation of
coryphee to any other, for the main reason that having spent her youth
in that employment she is unfitted for any other. She has been rejected
at the minor theatres where they want danseuses; she has not succeeded
in the three towns where ballets are given; she has not had the money,
or perhaps the desire to go to foreign countries--for perhaps you don't
know that the great school of dancing in Paris supplies the whole world
with male and female dancers. Thus a rat who becomes a
marcheuse,--that is to say, an ordinary figurante in a ballet,--must have
some solid attachment which keeps her in Paris: either a rich man she
does not love or a poor man she loves too well. The one you have just
seen pass will probably dress and redress three times this evening,--as a
princess, a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese; by which she will earn about two
hundred francs a month."
"She is better dressed than my prefect's wife."

"If you should go to her house," said Bixiou, "you would find there a
chamber-maid, a cook, and a man-servant. She occupies a fine
apartment in the rue Saint-Georges; in short, she is, in proportion to
French fortunes of the present day compared with those of former times,
a relic of the eighteenth century 'opera-girl.' Carabine is a power; at this
moment she governs du Tillet, a banker who is very influential in the
Chamber of Deputies."
"And above these two rounds in the ballet ladder what comes next?"
asked Gazonal.
"Look!" said his cousin, pointing to an elegant caleche which was
turning at that moment from the boulevard into the rue Grange-
Bateliere, "there's one of the leading danseuses whose name on the
posters attracts all Paris. That woman earns sixty thousand francs a year
and lives like a princess; the price of your manufactory all told wouldn't
suffice to buy you the privilege of bidding her good-morning a dozen
times."
"Do you see," said Bixiou, "that young man who is sitting on the front
seat of her carriage? Well, he's a viscount who bears a fine old name;
he's her first gentleman of the bed-chamber; does all her business with
the newspapers; carries messages of peace or war in the morning to the
director of the Opera; and takes charge of the applause which salutes
her as she enters or leaves the stage."
"Well, well, my good friends, that's the finishing touch! I see now that I
knew nothing of the ways of Paris."
"At any rate, you are learning what you can see in ten minutes in the
Passage de l'Opera," said Bixiou. "Look there."
Two persons, a man and a woman, came out of the Passage at that
moment. The woman was neither plain nor pretty; but her dress had
that distinction of style and cut and color which reveals an artist; the
man had the air of a singer.
"There," said Bixiou, "is a baritone and a second danseuse. The

baritone is a man of immense talent, but a baritone voice being only an
accessory to the other parts he scarcely earns what the second danseuse
earns. The danseuse, who was celebrated before Taglioni and Ellsler
appeared, has preserved to our day some