“Everybody in the theatre is anxious about him,” continued the flute; “and, as the premiere danseuse, Mlle. Brisetout, says, ‘he makes hardly any noise now when he blows his nose.’”
And, indeed, a peal like a blast of a horn used to resound through the old musician’s bandana handkerchief whenever he raised it to that lengthy and cavernous feature. The President’s wife had more frequently found fault with him on that score than on any other.
“I vould gif a goot teal to amuse him,” said Schmucke, “he gets so dull.”
“M. Pons always seems so much above the like of us poor devils, that, upon my word, I didn’t dare to ask him to my wedding,” said Wilhelm Schwab. “I am going to be married—”
“How?” demanded Schmucke.
“Oh! quite properly,” returned Wilhelm Schwab, taking Schmucke’s quaint inquiry for a gibe, of which that perfect Christian was quite incapable.
“Come, gentlemen, take your places!” called Pons, looking round at his little army, as the stage manager’s bell rang for the overture.
The piece was a dramatized fairy tale, a pantomime called The Devil’s Betrothed, which ran for two hundred nights. In the interval, after the first act, Wilhelm Schwab and Schmucke were left alone in the orchestra, with a house at a temperature of thirty-two degrees Reaumur.
“Tell me your hishdory,” said Schmucke.
“Look there! Do you see that young man in the box yonder?... Do you recognize him?”