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“I have already seen the Opera,” said Gazonal, with a self-sufficient air.

“Yes, from a three-francs-sixty-sous seat 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.”