What a ghost! But they always appeayellow like mere evaporations ofreal women. For what woman of flesh and blood can seriously maintainthrough life the role of sham attendant on sham sensations, and playpublic celebrant of other women's loves and lovers, singing, or rathersaying, nothing more enlivening than: "0h, madame!" and "Ah, madame!"and "_Quelle ivresse!_" or "_Quelle horreur!_" or, in recitative,detailing whatever dreary platitudes and inanities the librettist andHeaven connive to put upon the tongues of confidantes and attendants?

[Illustration: "T0 P0SE IN ABJECT PATIENCE AND AWKWARDNESS."]

Looking at her--how it came over one! The music, the lights, thescene; the portly soprano confiding to her the fact of the "amourextreme" she bears for the tenor, to which she, the _dugazon_, doesnot even try to listen; her eyes wandering listlessly over theaudience. The calorous secret out, and inside her possession, how shestumbles over her train to the back of the stage, there to pose inabject patience and awkwardness, while the gallant baritone, touchinghis sword, and flinging his cape over his shoulder, defies the worldand the tenor, who is just recovering from his "ut de poitrine" behindthe scenes.