Then comes the performance with full orchestra (in my case it was not quite full, for there was only a clarinet and a half, the old boy who played the first—having only one tooth and being asthmatic besides—being only able to squeeze out a note here and there). The conductor raises his baton——
The sun rises; ’cello solo, gentle crescendo.
The little birds wake; flute solo, violin tremolo.
The little rills gurgle; alto solo.
The little lambs bleat; oboe solo.
And as the crescendo goes on and the little birds and little brooks and little beasts finish their performance, one suddenly discovers that it is noon; then follow the successive airs up to the third, with which the hero usually expires and the audience once more breathes freely.
Then the secretary, holding in one hand the artificial laurel wreath and in the other the gold medal, worth enough to keep the recipient until he leaves for Rome (in point of fact, I have proved that it is worth exactly a hundred and sixty francs) pompously enunciates the name of the author.
“His smooth, chaste forehead, newly shorn,
is wreathed with modest blushes.”
He embraces the secretary—faint applause. He embraces his master, seated close by—more applause. Next come his mother, his sisters, his cousins, and his aunts to the tune of more applause; then his fiancée, after which—treading on people’s toes and tearing ladies’ dresses in the blind confusion of his headlong career—he regains his seat, bathed in perspiration. Loud applause and laughter.