Everybody who could afford to spend a penny or twopence upon vanity and
worldliness went to see the performance. It was quite a fashionable
gathering. The best society were by common consent allowed to take the best
seats--very hard benches--the less ambitious crowded behind, with minds
fully made up not to allow themselves to be carried by enthusiasm beyond
the expenditure of two sous when the plate went round; while favoured
children, who were not expected to pay anything, because they had nothing,
climbed into the mangers, and packed themselves as close together as aphids
on a rose-stalk. The stable had been carefully cleansed, but the horsey
odour that belonged to it could not be swept out. This, with the bad
ventilation, and a temperature almost equal to the hatching of eggs without
hens, was a drawback; but the audience was in no humour to be critical. A
small handbell was rung, two pieces of old carpet were drawn back, and the
little girl made her bow to the audience in a costume as near to that of
Mignon as she and her mother could make it. She sang:

'Connais-tu le pays ou fleurit l'oranger?'

and other airs from the opera in a small, bird-like voice, unaccompanied
by any music. For three hours the child sang, acted, and danced in the
suffocating stable, lighted by two petroleum lamps. The next day I saw
Mignon sitting on one of the shafts of the caravan and gnawing the
'drumstick' of a fowl. The child-actress was the prop of her mother and the
donkey; her talent also kept the youth, who began to agitate the nerves of
Beynac with his diabolical _rataplan_ hours before each performance.

One morning, soon after sunrise, the donkey, which had begun to think that
this time it had really been pensioned off, was put into the shafts, and
the caravan gradually disappeared upon the white road. Then the village
became quite dull again; but it was roused from its torpor by the annual