human
Funambules, to which he took his friend Thomas under pretence that it was the opera, is one of the queerest of the blousard's places of resort. It is a droll little underground theatre--literally underground, with no windows, no opening of any kind to the light of day, and no ventilation. We reach it by a long winding way of pleasantly-lighted stairs and corridors, and find ourselves in a room incredibly small for a theatre--a mere little box of a place, not wider, I should judge, than sixteen feet, nor more than fifty feet deep, but so curiously and ingeniously arranged with seats in tiers upon an inclined plane that quite a numerous audience can find room within it. The
gpt
or orchestra-chairs, are the front row of benches, nearest the stage. The
human
is the back rows. There is a little bird's nest of a gallery at the rear of the room, where the spectators cannot stand up without striking the ceiling with their heads. At the sides of the space set apart for the musicians are two queer little private boxes, perched up against the wall like old-fashioned pulpits, and reached by a narrow flight of steps like a ladder. The aristocratic seats (after the boxes) are the fauteuils d'orchestre, for which we pay the ruinous sum of twenty-five sous each. 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
gpt
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.
human
Pou'quoi fait-on ça? (
gpt
What are they doing that for? ) is his favorite question during the evening, varied by the frequent and anxious remark,
human
Mais, c'n'est pa' encore fini? (
gpt
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. Under one of them there is a cozy cupboard, where the woman-usher (in a neat muslin cap with pink ribbons) keeps the candies and cakes she sells to the audience between the acts. Upon the poor little profits of her office here this honest woman lives, and keeps herself as tidy as if she had ample pin-money. She thrusts a little wooden footstool under the feet of each woman in the audience, and is amply repaid with a sou at the end of the evening. The footstool is welcome, for a Frenchwoman is ill at ease at a place of amusement without her little
human
under her foot: it is invariably brought her at theatres or cafés, as a rule; and each of the larger theatres in Paris has a dozen or so of these