Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down among
occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this swooning
murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra struck up the
small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm bubbling with
roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they were already on the
grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost rows of the pit applauded
furiously. The curtain rose.

"By George!" exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. "There's a man
with Lucy."

He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the
front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of this box
were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline's mother and the
side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light hair and an
irreproachable getup.

"Do look!" La Faloise again insisted. "There's a man there."

Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he
turned round again directly.

"Oh, it's Labordette," he muttered in a careless voice, as though that
gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though both
natural and immaterial.

Behind the cousins people shouted "Silence!" They had to cease talking.
A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches of heads,
all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to topmost gallery.