"Tell me what I am to do here."
"Where?"
"On the stage, while M. Michelot and M. Joanny are holding their dialogue."
"You are to listen, madame."
"Yes! I am to listen.... I know that; but I find listening rather tedious."
"Yet you know the scene was originally much longer and I have already cut it down by twenty lines."
"Yes, but could you not cut out another twenty lines?"
"Impossible, madame!"
"Or, at all events, arrange that I take some sort of part in it."