out with fatigue; she exhausted her body this morning in the
dancing-class, she is just leaving a rehearsal where the evolutions are
as complicated as a Chinese puzzle; and she'll go through them again
to-night. The rat is one of the primary elements of the Opera; she is
to the leading danseuse what a junior clerk is to a notary. The rat is
--hope."

"Who produces the rat?" asked Gazonal.

"Porters, paupers, actors, dancers," replied Bixiou. "Only the lowest
depths of poverty could force a child to subject her feet and joints
to positive torture, to keep herself virtuous out of mere speculation
until she is eighteen years of age, and to live with some horrible old
crone like a beautiful plant in a dressing of manure. You shall see
now a procession defiling before you, one after the other, of men of
talent, little and great, artists in seed or flower, who are raising
to the glory of France that every-day monument called the Opera, an
assemblage of forces, wills, and forms of genius, nowhere collected as
in Paris.

"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."