The little dreary laugh made him shiver.
"Mille remerciments, mon camarade. I'm a failure, and failures are best left alone. C'est ainsi que la vie!"
* * * * * *
Hers was the sole fiasco in an otherwise successful performance.
The final spectacle was a lurid representation of the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah.
This species of scriptural tableaux was frequently given, and was greatly to the taste of the spectators.
Such scenes were regularly presented in the theatres and heartily enjoyed by the superstitious and devout populace, who found in them nothing incongruous or repulsive to their piety.
In this particular display the Manager had excelled himself, and achieved above all things a most vivid realism.
The gentleman who impersonated the patriarch Lot had a distinctly modern air, and resembled a third-rate Anarchist in depressing circumstances.
He was dark and swarthy, and possessed a ferocious expression, and on the whole suggested a caricature of Emile in his worst frame of mind.