Hard Labor for Girls.
Indeed, there is but little poetry in the existence of the smiling and light-footed dancers whose pirouettes afford so much pleasure to the old gentlemen in the orchestra stalls. They begin often at the age of 5 or 6 in the class des petites, and then every day in the year they practice and toil and chatter and caper until from rats they become successful figurantes at the rate of one franc a night, members of the first and second quadrilles, coryphees and sujets. Then at the end of their first three years’ engagement begins a period of bitter grief. For then it often happens that, instead of encouraging them and giving them a decent salary, the administration of the opera chooses its stars from among foreigners.