"Have you seen Monsieur Vaudrey come in yet, Louis?" asked a still young
man with a monocle in his eye, who seemed quite at home behind the
scenes.

"His Excellency is in the manager's box, monsieur!" answered the servant
civilly.

"Thank you, Louis!"

And as the visitor turned to go up the narrow stairway leading to the
greenroom, the servant wrote down in the running-hand of a clerk, upon
the printed sheet: _Monsieur Guy de Lissac_.

Upon the stage, Vaudrey, the Minister whom Lissac had been inquiring
for, stood arm in arm with his companion Granet, looking in astonishment
at the vast machinery of the opera, operated by this army of workmen,
whom he did not know. He was quite astonished at the sight, as he had
never beheld its like. His astonishment was so evident and artless that
Granet, his friend and colleague in the Chamber of Deputies, could not
help smiling at it from under his carefully waxed moustaches.

"I consider all this much more wonderful than the opera itself,"
observed his Excellency. The floor and wings were like great yellow
spots, and the whole immense stage resembled a great, sandy desert.
Vaudrey raised his head to gaze at the symmetrical arrangement of the
chandeliers, as bright as rows of gas-jets, amongst the hangings of the
friezes. A huge canvas at the back represented a sunlit Indian
landscape, and in the enormous space between the lowered curtain and the
scenery, some black spots seemed as if dancing, strange silhouettes of