danseuse earns. The danseuse, who was celebrated before Taglioni and
Ellsler appeared, has preserved to our day some of the old traditions
of the character dance and pantomime. If the two others had not
revealed in the art of dancing a poetry hitherto unperceived, she
would have been the leading talent; as it is, she is reduced to the
second line. But for all that, she fingers her thirty thousand francs
a year, and her faithful friend is a peer of France, very influential
in the Chamber. And see! there's a danseuse of the third order, who,
as a dancer, exists only through the omnipotence of a newspaper. If
her engagement were not renewed the ministry would have one more
journalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a great power;
consequently it is considered better form in the upper ranks of
dandyism and politics to have relations with dance than with song. In
the stalls, where the habitues of the Opera congregate, the saying
'Monsieur is all for singing' is a form of ridicule."

A short man with a common face, quite simply dressed, passed them at
this moment.

"There's the other half of the Opera receipts--that man who just went
by; the tenor. There is no longer any play, poem, music, or
representation of any kind possible unless some celebrated tenor can
reach a certain note. The tenor is love, he is the Voice that touches
the heart, that vibrates in the soul, and his value is reckoned at a
much higher salary than that of a minister. One hundred thousand
francs for a throat, one hundred thousand francs for a couple of
ankle-bones,--those are the two financial scourges of the Opera."

"I am amazed," said Gazonal, "at the hundreds of thousands of francs
walking about here."