“I will prompt as many as you please,” said stout Dufournelle; “don’t be afraid, I am solidly built, and my breath won’t give out.”
Monsieur Camuzard, seeing that the post of prompter was about to escape him, hastily rejoined:
“After all, when I have got started, it won’t be any more trouble to prompt all three plays.”
“Let’s rehearse, my friends, let’s rehearse, let’s not lose any more time,” said Monsieur Glumeau. “The two short pieces go well enough, but Roderic et Cunégonde doesn’t go well at all. There is so much stage play. Astianax, go and get the wooden swords, so that we may rehearse the fights also.”
“Do you expect much company this evening?” asked Madame Dufournelle.
“Well, I should say so! A most select audience; I have invited more than a hundred people, more or less; journalists, artists; I don’t count the people of the village and the neighborhood, who come to see the play. When I don’t allow them to enter, they raise the devil; they besiege the place and break down my trellis.”
“They represent the audience in the upper gallery in the theatres in Paris; they are often the best judges of the performance.”
“Astianax, did you ask your neighbor, Monsieur Jéricourt, to come?”
“Yes, papa, and he will bring one of his friends, a young man you would take for a tailor’s model, he is so well dressed: Monsieur Arthur de Saint-Alfred—no, I am wrong, it is Alfred de Saint-Arthur.”