His Excellency the Minister | Page 9

a rapid biography of the young girls who were laughing, jesting, romping there before them; flitting hither and thither lightly across the boards, barely touching them with the tips of their pink satin-shod feet.
Sulpice was surprised at everything he saw. He did not even take the pains to conceal his surprise. Evidently it was his first visit behind the scenes.
"Ah! your Excellency," said Molina, delighted with his r?le of cicerone, "it is necessary to be at home here! You should come here often! Nothing in the world can be more amusing. Here behind the scenes is a world by itself. One can see pretty little lasses springing up like asparagus. One sees running hither and thither a tall, thin child who nods to you saucily and crunches nuts like a squirrel. One takes a three months' journey, and passes a season at Vichy or at Dieppe, and when one returns, presto! see the transformation. The butterfly has burst forth from its cocoon. No longer a little girl, but a woman. Those saucy eyes of old now look at you with an expression which disturbs your heart. One might have offered, six months before, two sous' worth of chestnuts to the child; now, however, nothing less than a coup�� will satisfy the woman. It used to jump on your knee at that time, now every one is throwing his arms around its pretty neck. Thus from generation to generation, one assists at the mobilization of a whole army of recruits, who first try their weapons here, pass from here into the regiment of veterans, build themselves a hospital in cut-stone out of their savings, and some of them mount very high through the tips of their toes if they are not suddenly attacked by the malady of the knee."
"Malady of the knee?" inquired Vaudrey.
"A phrase not to be found in the Dictionary of Political Economy by Maurice Block. It is a way of saying that ill-luck has overtaken one. A very interesting condition, this malady of the knee! It often not only shortens the leg but the career!"
"Is this malady a frequent one at the Op��ra?"
"Ah! your Excellency, how can it be helped? There are so many slips in this pirouetting business! It is as risky as politics!"
Fat Molina shouted with laughter at this clumsy jest, and placing a binocle upon his huge nose, which was cleft down the middle like that of a hunting-hound, he exclaimed suddenly, turning towards the door as he spoke:
"Eh! Marie Launay? What is she holding in her hand?"
Light, nimble and graceful in her costume of a Hindoo dancing girl, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen summers, already betraying her womanhood in the ardent glances half-hidden in the depths of her large, deep-blue eyes, tripped into the greenroom, humming an air and holding in her hand a long sheet of paper.
She shook, as if embarrassed by it, the broad necklace of large imitation pearls that danced on her fine neck and fell on her undeveloped bosom; and looking in search of some one among the crowd of girls, cried out from a distance to a plump little brunette who was talking and laughing within a circle of dress-coats at the other end of the room:
"Eh! Anna, you have not subscribed yet!"
The brunette, freeing herself unceremoniously enough from her living madrigals, came running lightly up to Marie Launay, who held out towards her an aluminum pencil-case and the sheet of paper.
"What the devil is that?" asked Molina.
"Let us go and see," said Granet.
"Would it not be an indiscretion on our part?" asked Vaudrey, half seriously.
The financier, however, was by this time at the side of the two pretty girls, and asked the blonde what the paper contained, the names on which her companion was spelling out.
Marie Launay, a lovely girl with little ringlets of fair hair curling low down upon her forehead, smiled like a pretty, innocent and still timid child, under the luring glances of the fat man, and glancing with an expression of virgin innocence at Sulpice and Granet, who were standing beside him, replied:
"That--Oh! that is the subscription we are getting up for Mademoiselle Legrand."
"Oh! that is so," said Molina. "You mean to make her a present of a statuette?"
"On her taking her leave of us. Yes, every one has subscribed to it--even the boxholders. Do you see?"
Marie Launay quickly snatched the paper from her friend; on it were several names, some written in ink, others in pencil, the whole presenting the peculiar appearance of schoolboys' pot-hooks or the graceful lines traced by crawling flies, while the fantastic spelling offered a strange medley. Molina burst out laughing, his ever-present laugh that sounded like the shaking of a money-bag,--when he ran his eye over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and