It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of those
they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box, sitting side
by side with their arms leaning for support on the velvet balustrade.
Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession of a stage box on the
level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined Daguenet before anyone
else, he being in occupation of a stall two rows in front of his own.
Close to him, a very young man, seventeen years old at the outside, some
truant from college, it may be, was straining wide a pair of fine eyes
such as a cherub might have owned. Fauchery smiled when he looked at
him.
"Who is that lady in the balcony?" La Faloise asked suddenly. "The lady
with a young girl in blue beside her."
He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a woman
who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of tint, her
broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a rain of little
childish curls.
"It's Gaga," was Fauchery's simple reply, and as this name seemed to
astound his cousin, he added:
"You don't know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of Louis
Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her wherever she
goes.
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