While they were dancing Phoebus treated Minerva to
salad bowls of negus, and Neptune sat in state among seven or eight
women who regaled him with cakes. Allusions were eagerly caught;
indecent meanings were attached to them; harmless phrases were diverted
from their proper significations in the light of exclamations issuing
from the stalls. For a long time past the theatrical public had not
wallowed in folly more irreverent. It rested them.
Nevertheless, the action of the piece advanced amid these fooleries.
Vulcan, as an elegant young man clad, down to his gloves, entirely in
yellow and with an eyeglass stuck in his eye, was forever running after
Venus, who at last made her appearance as a fishwife, a kerchief on her
head and her bosom, covered with big gold trinkets, in great evidence.
Nana was so white and plump and looked so natural in a part demanding
wide hips and a voluptuous mouth that she straightway won the whole
house. On her account Rose Mignon was forgotten, though she was made up
as a delicious baby, with a wicker-work burlet on her head and a short
muslin frock and had just sighed forth Diana's plaints in a sweetly
pretty voice. The other one, the big wench who slapped her thighs and
clucked like a hen, shed round her an odor of life, a sovereign feminine
charm, with which the public grew intoxicated.
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