I am glad of it.

(A bag-pipe air, and Montfleury appears, a very powerful man in a poetic shepherd's dress: his hat ornamented with roses and his bag-pipe with ribbons.)

THE PIT (applauding).

Bravo, Montfleury! Montfleury!

MONTFLEURY (after bowing, begins his part of Phédon).

"Oh! happy he who far from courts, in solitude,[7]
Self-banished, has cast off the chains of servitude,
And who, when zephyr sighs and rustles through the leaves...."

A VOICE IN THE PIT.

You rascal, did I not suspend you for a month?

(Astonishment. Everybody eager to see who spoke. Murmurs.)

SEVERAL OF THE AUDIENCE.