"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.