who had become blind and reduced to poverty.

This "dramatic solemnity," to use the language of the advertisement,
began by being terribly tiresome. There was an audience present who were
accustomed to grand Parisian soirees, a blase and satiated public, who,
upon this warm evening in the suffocating theatre, were more fatigued and
satiated than ever. The sleepy journalists collapsed in their chairs,
and in the back part of the stage-boxes, ladies' faces, almost green
under paint, showed the excessive lassitude of a long winter of pleasure.
The Parisians had all come there from custom, without having the
slightest desire to do so, just as they always came, like galley-slaves
condemned to "first nights." They were so lifeless that they did not
even feel the slightest horror at seeing one another grow old. This
chloroformed audience was afflicted with a long and too heavy programme,
as is the custom in performances of this kind. They played fragments of
the best known pieces, and sang songs from operas long since fallen into
disuse even on street organs. This public saw the same comedians march
out; the most famous are the most monotonous; the comical ones abused
their privileges; the lover spoke distractedly through his nose; the
great coquette--the actress par excellence, the last of the Celimenes--
discharged her part in such a sluggish way that when she began an adverb
ending in "ment," one would have almost had time to go out and smoke a
cigarette or drink a glass of beer before she reached the end of the said
adverb.

But at the most lethargic moment of this drowsy soirees, after the
comedians from the Francais had played in a stately manner one act
from a tragedy, Jocquelet appeared. Jocquelet, still a pupil at the
Conservatoire, showed himself to the public for the first time and by an
exceptional grace--Jocquelet, absolutely unknown, too short in his