“You see,” continued the father seriously as he rejoined me, having divested himself of the barrel and run the wheelbarrow out of the way of an advancing herd of elephants, “it is different with your big American shows. An artist there never gets credit for his work. With so many acts going at once it is impossible for him to be fairly seen. He can play only to a small section of the house, and, if he is doing high trap work like my son-in-law, he no sooner gets a neat trick worked up than the bell rings and down the rope he has to come.
“Well, sir, I must wash up and be getting along; we have dinner at home at six and I have a little special marketing to do for we have some old friends coming.”
The stage of the Folies Bergère during a spectacular _revue_ is a busy place. Sunday evening is always a crowded night at Parisian theaters and a hard one upon players, since all the theaters on that day give matinées as well.
There are few persons in an audience who realize the amount of hard work required of every one behind the scenes in the staging and playing of a spectacular _revue_.
It was nine o’clock Sunday evening and the _revue_ at the Folies Bergère was about to begin, as my friend, a successful writer of many Parisian _revues_, Monsieur René Louis, led me through the crowded _promenoir_ of this thoroughly Parisian music-hall and through a small iron door into another world. I say another world, for it was peopled with fairies—_coryphées_ in pink tights whose eyes were stenciled and lined with blue until they appeared as almond-shaped as an odalisque’s. The stage was crowded with scene-shifters in black caps and long white linen dusters, with ladies protected from stray drafts by warm woolen dressing gowns, with hair-dressers in their shirt-sleeves, with firemen in shining brass helmets, with ballet girls in white tulle and fleshings, and pink satin slippers with padded toes.
We came upon all this suddenly, for, as we entered the iron door leading to the _coulisses_, we found ourselves in a small _entresol_ and in the midst of a dozen _coryphées_ who were giving a final touch to their make-up before an extra mirror.
The air was heavy with the odor of scores of different cheap perfumes.