"
La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga moved
him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her very good
looking but he dared not say so.
Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra attacked
the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and noise were on
the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first nights and never
subject to change, there were little subsections composed of intimate
friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old first-nighters, hat on
head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and kept exchanging salutations.
All Paris was there, the Paris of literature, of finance and of
pleasure. There were many journalists, several authors, a number of
stock-exchange people and more courtesans than honest women. It was
a singularly mixed world, composed, as it was, of all the talents and
tarnished by all the vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same
fever played over every face. Fauchery, whom his cousin was questioning,
showed him the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the clubs and
then named the dramatic critics--a lean, dried-up individual with
thin, spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a good-natured
expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a young miss over
whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes.
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