half a dozen of her male friends. The reception lasted almost always
about as long as the performances; but it included a number of
parentheses. Whenever the actress, was obliged to change her costume
she would turn towards her visitors with a bewitching smile and
beseeching eyes:

"Gentlemen, will you withdraw for one little moment?--not more than
one little moment."

Thereupon they would all transfer themselves to the ante-room and
remain there patiently waiting. No, I am mistaken, not quite all,
because the youngest of them, a third year student in the School of
Medicine, would avail himself of the chance to take a turn in the
wings to stretch his legs and snatch a fugitive kiss or so. At all
events, the majority remained, either seated or pacing up and down,
until the moment when Clotilde would re-open her door and, putting out
her head, decked as queen or peasant girl, according to the part she
was playing, would call out:

"Now you may come back, gentlemen. Have I been very long?"

Don Jerónimo always lingered. He was the last to withdraw grumbling
and the first to return to the dressing-room. He was never able to
reconcile himself to that modest custom. And although he never allowed
himself to say so openly, yet in the depths of his secret thoughts he
regarded it as a lack of courtesy that he should be ejected from his
seat, merely because the silly child must change her dress,--he, who
for thirty years had passed his life behind the scenes and had been on
intimate terms with every actor and actress, ancient and modern!