"Do look!" La Faloise again insisted. "There's a man there."
Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he
turned round again directly.
"Oh, it's Labordette," he muttered in a careless voice, as though that
gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though both
natural and immaterial.
Behind the cousins people shouted "Silence!" They had to cease talking.
A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches of heads,
all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to topmost gallery.
The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in Olympus, a pasteboard
Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the throne of Jupiter on the
right of the stage. First of all Iris and Ganymede, aided by a troupe of
celestial attendants, sang a chorus while they arranged the seats of
the gods for the council. Once again the prearranged applause of the
clappers alone burst forth; the public, a little out of their depth, sat
waiting. Nevertheless, La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of
Bordenave's little women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a
great scarf of the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.
"You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on," he said to
Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him.
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