breach. Who could say?--the factory might take fire in the night. And
he repeated sententiously: "The eye of the master, my dear fellow, the
eye of the master," while the actor--who was little better pleased by
this intended departure--opened his great eyes; giving them an expression
at once cunning and authoritative, the veritable expression of the eye of
the master.

At last, about midnight, the last Montrouge omnibus bore away the
tyrannical father-in-law, and Delobelle was able to speak.

"Let us first look at the prospectus," he said, preferring not to attack
the question of figures at once; and with his eyeglasses on his nose, he
began, in a declamatory tone, always upon the stage: "When one considers
coolly the decrepitude which dramatic art has reached in France, when one
measures the distance that separates the stage of Moliere--"

There were several pages like that. Risler listened, puffing at his
pipe, afraid to stir, for the reader looked at him every moment over his
eyeglasses, to watch the effect of his phrases. Unfortunately, right in
the middle of the prospectus, the cafe closed. The lights were
extinguished; they must go.--And the estimates?--It was agreed that they
should read them as they walked along. They stopped at every gaslight.
The actor displayed his figures. So much for the hall, so much for the
lighting, so much for poor-rates, so much for the actors. On that
question of the actors he was firm.

"The best point about the affair," he said, "is that we shall have no
leading man to pay. Our leading man will be Bibi." (When Delobelle
mentioned himself, he commonly called himself Bibi.) "A leading man is
paid twenty thousand francs, and as we have none to pay, it's just as if