The windows were opened on the balcony overlooking the boulevard, then at its full tide of noise and animation, and blazing with light. The theatre was surrounded with rows of gas-jets, a circle of flame lighting up the most obscure recesses where flickering lanterns gleamed like stars travelling through the dark sky. The play was done. The audience was leaving the theatre. The dark throng moved in a compact mass down the steps and scattered to right and left along the white sidewalks, to spread through the city the news of a great success and the name of an unknown author, who would be illustrious and famous on the morrow. A most enjoyable evening, causing the restaurant windows to blaze with delight and the streets to be filled with long lines of belated carriages. That holiday uproar, of which the poor Nabob had been so fond and which was well adapted to the giddy whirl of his existence, aroused him for a second. His lips moved, and his staring eyes, turned toward de Géry, assumed in presence of death a sorrowful, imploring, rebellious expression, as if to call upon him to bear witness to one of the greatest, the most cruel acts of injustice that Paris ever committed.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]The Fat Woman, or "Fatty."
[2] A sarigue is an opossum.
[3] There is in the text at this point a play upon words which it is impossible to render in English. "Les toilettes terminées, le déjeuner fini, pris sur le pouce--et sur le pouce de ces demoiselles vous pensez ce qu'il peut tenir," etc., that is to say: "the breakfast at an end, taken upon the thumb--and you can imagine how much the thumbs of those young ladies would hold." To eat _sur le pouce_ (eat upon the thumb) means to eat hastily, without taking time to sit down.
[4] Chose—literally thing.
[5]Ah! I say, Monsieur.
[6] "My Dear Old Comrade,—I cannot see my way to accompanying you to see Le Merquier. Too busy just now. Indeed, you will do better to talk with him alone. Go there openly. You are expected. Rue Cassette, every morning, 8 to 10.
"Yours cordially,
"Hemerlingue."