'Don't they look after it well? Just look at the door-keepers! What a theatre it is!'
The jerky movements of her short arms and the puffing of her fat little body diffused through the passage a sense of noisy gleefulness which made people say in every box, 'Here's Madame Ancelin!' On Tuesdays especially, the fashionable indifference of the house contrasted oddly with the seat where, in supreme content, leaning half out of the box, sat and cooed this good plump pink-eyed pigeon, piping away audibly, 'Look at Coquelin! Look at De-launay! What perennial youth! What an admirable theatre!' She never allowed her friends to talk of anything else, and in the _entr'actes_ greeted her visitors with exclamations of rapture over the genius of the Academic playwright and the grace of the Actress-Associate.
At Paul Astier's entrance the curtain was up; and knowing that the ritual of Madame Ancelin required absolute silence at such a time, he waited quietly in the little room, separated by a step from the front of the box, where Madame Ancelin was seated in bliss between Madame Astier and Madame Eviza, while behind were Danjou and De Freydet looking like prisoners. The click, which the box-door made and must make in shutting, was followed by a 'Hush!' calculated to appal the intruder who was disturbing the service. Madame Astier half turned round, and felt a shiver at the sight of her son. What was the matter? What had Paul to say to her of such pressing importance as to bring him to that haunt of boredom--Paul, who never let himself be bored without a reason? Money again, no doubt, horrid money! Well, fortunately she would soon have plenty; Sammy's marriage would make them all rich. Much as she longed to go up to Paul and reassure him with the good news, which perhaps he had not heard, she was obliged to stay in her seat, look on at the play, and join as chorus in her hostess's exclamations, 'Look at Coquelin! Look at De-launay! Oh! Oh!' It was a hard trial to her to have to wait So it was to Paul, who could see nothing but the glaring heat of the footlights, and in the looking-glass at the side the reflection of part of the house, stalls, dress-circle, boxes, rows of faces, pretty dresses, bonnets, all as it were drowned in a blue haze, and presenting the colourless ghostly appearance of things dimly seen under water. During the _entr'acte_ came the usual infliction of indiscriminate praise.