"They represent the audience in the upper gallery in the theatres in Paris; they are often the best judges of the performance."
"Astianax, did you ask your neighbor, Monsieur Jéricourt, to come?"
"Yes, papa, and he will bring one of his friends, a young man you would take for a tailor's model, he is so well dressed: Monsieur Arthur de Saint-Alfred--no, I am wrong, it is Alfred de Saint-Arthur."
"Saint-Arthur! Alfred! that gentleman must be a humbug!"
"I assure you, madame, that he is a very good-looking fellow; at the theatre he never sits anywhere but in the proscenium boxes!"
"As he never sits anywhere but in the proscenium," said Dufournelle, "he is necessarily a young man of very high station."
"Let's rehearse, my friends, let us rehearse."
"But we are not all here yet, young Kingerie and Monsieur Fourriette the druggist are still missing."
"I d--d--don't want to f--f--fight with Monsieur F--F--Fourriette!" said Mademoiselle Eolinde; "he always hits me on the f--f--fingers with his sword."
"The trouble is that he puts too much action into his part; these druggists are generally very warm, especially as they are almost always from the South. Why is it that the South supplies more druggists and more apothecaries than the North? That is a question I have often asked myself. What do you say upon that point, messieurs?"
"It seems to me easy enough to understand," said Monsieur Dufournelle. "It's because sun dials are always placed in the south."
"I don't understand the joke," said Monsieur Camuzard, blowing his nose.
At last, Messieurs Kingerie and Fourriette appeared on the road; the first, as awkward as ever, began by upsetting a box of cactus which stood in a path where there was much more room than he required. As for the druggist, a dark-haired, very good-looking youth, he was all curled and perfumed, and made eyes at all the ladies, to whom he did not fail to offer pastilles which he had made himself.
"Take care, madame, take care," said Dufournelle, "it is very imprudent to accept monsieur's pastilles; you don't know what he may have put in them! He is quite capable of giving you something that will make you fall in love with him."
"If I knew that secret, I should not fail to make use of it," said Monsieur Fourriette, still offering his box and smiling at the ladies.