Here we are in an atmosphere utterly unlike that of the beuglant
just described, for this is a place where the honest blousard comes
with his wife and children for an evening of innocent amusement.
Directly behind us sits a family of three generations--a bent old man
of seventy-five or eighty years, gray-haired and venerable; a
round-faced, middle-aged blousard with his dark-eyed wife; and their
two little babies, scarcely old enough to prattle, and who lisp their
delight with beaming eyes to "dan'pere." Next me is a bright-eyed boy
of four years, with clustering curls about his fair forehead, who sits
bolt upright in his mother's lap and comments in subdued but earnest
tones on the performers on the stage. "Pou'quoi fait-on ca?" ("What
are they doing that for?") is his favorite question during the
evening, varied by the frequent and anxious remark, "Mais, c'n'est pa'
encore fini?" ("But it is not yet finished?"). A cat is asleep on the
steps of the private box at the left. Neither of the boxes is
tenanted, by the way, as they are inordinately expensive--fifty sous
each occupant, or some such heavy sum of money.
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