" The ticket-seller is a
prosperous-looking old woman of fifty or there-about, who wears a
beribboned cap and side-curls, and has a mouth which tells of years
spent in the authoritative position she occupies. She is stern to a
terrible degree with the average blousard who approaches the round
hole whereat she reigns; but to us, who indulge in the extravagance of
paying the extra five sous for the privilege of entering without
taking our place in the queue at the door, she relaxes visibly.
The curtain rises at seven o'clock, here as at all the theatres where
the blousard pays his money, and the amusement continues until after
midnight. But it is not amusing. There are several pieces on the bill,
but' the chief one, a drama in five acts, is a poor thing, played by
mediocre actors in the most dismal manner possible. The scenery is
worn and dilapidated and wretched; the play turns on the sufferings of
the poor; there are two or three murders, a suicide, a death from
starvation, and such a glut of horrors that the whole entertertainment
is dismal and depressing to the last degree.
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