idea, which prevented them from feeling the burden of enforced vigils.
That idea was the dramatic renown of the illustrious Delobelle. After he
had left the provincial theatres to pursue his profession in Paris,
Delobelle waited for an intelligent manager, the ideal and providential
manager who discovers geniuses, to seek him out and offer him a role
suited to his talents. He might, perhaps, especially at the beginning,
have obtained a passably good engagement at a theatre of the third order,
but Delobelle did not choose to lower himself.

He preferred to wait, to struggle, as he said! And this is how he
awaited the struggle.

In the morning in his bedroom, often in his bed, he rehearsed roles in
his former repertory; and the Delobelle ladies trembled with emotion when
they heard behind the partition tirades from 'Antony' or the 'Medecin des
Enfants', declaimed in a sonorous voice that blended with the thousand-
and-one noises of the great Parisian bee-hive. Then, after breakfast,
the actor would sally forth for the day; would go to "do his boulevard,"
that is to say, to saunter to and fro between the Chateau d'Eau and the
Madeline, with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, his hat a little
on one side-always gloved, and brushed, and glossy.

That question of dress was of great importance in his eyes. It was one
of the greatest elements of success, a bait for the manager--the famous,
intelligent manager--who never would dream of engaging a threadbare,
shabbily dressed man.

So the Delobelle ladies took good care that he lacked nothing; and you
can imagine how many birds and insects it required to fit out a blade of
that temper! The actor thought it the most natural thing in the world.