“And above these two rounds in the ballet ladder what comes next?” asked Gazonal.
“Look!” said his cousin, pointing to an elegant caleche which was turning at that moment from the boulevard into the rue Grange-Bateliere, “there’s one of the leading danseuses whose name on the posters attracts all Paris. That woman earns sixty thousand francs a year and lives like a princess; the price of your manufactory all told wouldn’t suffice to buy you the privilege of bidding her good-morning a dozen times.”
“Do you see,” said Bixiou, “that young man who is sitting on the front seat of her carriage? Well, he’s a viscount who bears a fine old name; he’s her first gentleman of the bed-chamber; does all her business with the newspapers; carries messages of peace or war in the morning to the director of the Opera; and takes charge of the applause which salutes her as she enters or leaves the stage.”
“Well, well, my good friends, that’s the finishing touch! I see now that I knew nothing of the ways of Paris.”
“At any rate, you are learning what you can see in ten minutes in the Passage de l’Opera,” said Bixiou. “Look there.”
Two persons, a man and a woman, came out of the Passage at that moment. The woman was neither plain nor pretty; but her dress had that distinction of style and cut and color which reveals an artist; the man had the air of a singer.
“There,” said Bixiou, “is a baritone and a second danseuse. The baritone is a man of immense talent, but a baritone voice being only an accessory to the other parts he scarcely earns what the second danseuse earns. The danseuse, who was celebrated before Taglioni and Ellsler appeared, has preserved to our day some of the old traditions of the character dance and pantomime. If the two others had not revealed in the art of dancing a poetry hitherto unperceived, she would have been the leading talent; as it is, she is reduced to the second line. But for all that, she fingers her thirty thousand francs a year, and her faithful friend is a peer of France, very influential in the Chamber. And see! there’s a danseuse of the third order, who, as a dancer, exists only through the omnipotence of a newspaper. If her engagement were not renewed the ministry would have one more journalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a great power; consequently it is considered better form in the upper ranks of dandyism and politics to have relations with dance than with song. In the stalls, where the habitues of the Opera congregate, the saying ‘Monsieur is all for singing’ is a form of ridicule.”
A short man with a common face, quite simply dressed, passed them at this moment.
“There’s the other half of the Opera receipts—that man who just went by; the tenor. There is no longer any play, poem, music, or representation of any kind possible unless some celebrated tenor can reach a certain note. The tenor is love, he is the Voice that touches the heart, that vibrates in the soul, and his value is reckoned at a much higher salary than that of a minister. One hundred thousand francs for a throat, one hundred thousand francs for a couple of ankle-bones,—those are the two financial scourges of the Opera.”
“I am amazed,” said Gazonal, “at the hundreds of thousands of francs walking about here.”