Drawing by Pezilla
AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE
“Dis donc, ma chérie,” said a petite brunette costumed as a gray pigeon to another pigeon whose dresser was attaching to her shoulders a pair of white wings, “did you find the tailor whose address I gave you yesterday? A hundred francs for a dress like my little brown one, and tu sais trés, trés chic. Tell Amélie I am coming to see her to-morrow à trois heures, n’est-ce pas?” and the gray pigeon hurried away to her place in the wings.
High up above the busy stage hung the great drops suspended from a network of ropes. Hoisted by the side of an Italian lake hung the back flat of the palace of diamonds, and next to it a dark wood through which at ten thirty-five, by the stage manager’s watch, fluttered nightly a ballet of bats.
My friend led the way through a back corridor to the director’s office. I found the director a serious man of affairs, who looked more like a scientist than a man of the theater. His greeting was most cordial, even hospitable, for, as he left me to attend to the performance, he added, with charming courtesy: “Monsieur, vous êtes ici chez vous; go where you will or, better still, let me present you to our stage manager. It is he who is really captain of the ship in the storm, for we have some rapid dark changes to make during the revue, when you will be safer in a corner.”
From the wings behind the blaze of the footlights, the crowded house lay like a flower-garden in the dusk. Here a patch of red flamed brighter than the rest from some theater hat; there the white of a shirt-front gleamed.
The prompter sat huddled under his wooden hood with his prompt-book in readiness for the raising of the curtain.
Behind him, the leader of the orchestra wiped his eyeglasses, looked at his watch, passed a word by the second violin to the oboe concerning a late correction, and, tapping his baton, began the overture.
Bang! Bang! Bang! pounded thrice the stage manager with measured precision, and, with a final glance at the people on the stage, gave the signal to the head electrician who turned a switch. Up went the curtain.