many a poor girl dreams, on returning from the theatre, of pearls and
diamonds, gold-embroidered gowns and sumptuous girdles; she fancies
herself adored, applauded, courted; but little she knows of that
treadmill life, in which the actress is forced to rehearsals under
pain of fines, to the reading of new pieces, to the constant study of
new roles. At each representation Florine changes her dress at least
two or three times; often she comes home exhausted and half-dead; but
before she can rest, she must wash off with various cosmetics the
white and the red she has applied, and clean all the powder from her
hair, if she has played a part from the eighteenth century. She
scarcely has time for food. When she plays, an actress can live no
life of her own; she can neither dress, nor eat, nor talk. Florine
often has no time to sup. On returning from a play, which lasts, in
these days, till after midnight, she does not get to bed before two in
the morning; but she must rise early to study her part, order her
dresses, try them on, breakfast, read her love-letters, answer them,
discuss with the leader of the "claque" the place for the plaudits,
pay for the triumphs of the last month in solid cash, and bespeak
those of the month ahead. In the days of Saint-Genest, the canonized
comedian who fulfilled his duties in a pious manner and wore a hair
shirt, we must suppose that an actor's life did not demand this
incessant activity. Sometimes Florine, seized with a bourgeois desire
to get out into the country and gather flowers, pretends to the
manager that she is ill.

But even these mechanical operations are nothing in comparison with
the intrigues to be carried on, the pains of wounded vanity to be
endured,--preferences shown by authors, parts taken away or given to
others, exactions of the male actors, spite of rivals, naggings of the
stage manager, struggles with journalists; all of which require