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The doctor, suddenly gloomy, watched her tugging at the laces. "Don't scowl," said Félicie. "I am never tight-laced. With my waist I should surely be a fool if I were." And she added, thinking of her best friend in the theatre, "It's all very well for Fagette, who has no shoulders and no hips; she's simply straight up and down. Michon, you can pull a little tighter still.
She, did not need to know anything about it. She divined, she found by instinct all that she needed from it. "At rehearsals, I never give them a hint as to any of my effects, I keep them all for the public. It will make Romilly tear his hair. How stupid they'll all look! Fagette, my dear, will make herself ill over it." She sat down on a little rickety chair.
She had also surprised the oldest actress of the theatre, their excellent mother Ravaud, in a corridor, baring, at Ligny's approach, all that was left to her, her magnificent arms, which had been famous for forty years. Fagette, with disgust, and the tip of a gloved finger, called Nanteuil's attention to the scene through which Durville, old Maury and Marie-Claire were struggling.
The choristers were uttering the mournful cries of the Kyrie eleison; the priest kissed the altar; turned towards the people and said: "Dominus vobiscum." Romilly; taking in the crowd at a glance, remarked "Chevalier has a full house." "Just look at that Louise Dalle," said Fagette. "To look as though she's in mourning, she has put on a black mackintosh!"
"Do look at Fagette," said Nanteuil. "She is charming in that blue Marie-Louise dress trimmed with chinchilla." Madame Doulce brought out from under her furs a stack of tickets already soiled through having been too frequently offered.
Nanteuil was tormenting herself in this fashion in her box, when Jenny Fagette came to join her there; Jenny Fagette, slender and fragile, the incarnation of Alfred de Musset's Muse, who at night wore out her eyes of periwinkle-blue by scribbling society notes and fashion articles. A mediocre actress, but a clever and wonderfully energetic woman, she was Nanteuil's most intimate friend.
And her mind wearied itself by turning over and over some four or five ideas. "I must go to Madame Royaumont to-morrow, to try on my gown. Yesterday I went with Fagette to Jeanne Perrin's dressing-room; she was dressing, and she showed her hairy legs, as if she was proud of them. She's not ugly, Jeanne Perrin; indeed, she has a fine head; but it is her expression that I dislike.
Fagette thought you were wonderful." "Really?" asked Chevalier. It was one of the happiest moments of his life. A shrieking voice issued from the deserted heights of the third galleries, sounding through the house like the whistle of a locomotive. "One can't hear a word you say, my children; speak louder and pronounce your words distinctly!"
Nanteuil, completely unnerved, and crushing her tiny handkerchief and her part in her hands, turned her back upon him, and hissed between her teeth: "Old idiot!" Fagette passed her arm round her waist, and led her gently aside to the foot of Racine's statue, where she whispered into her ear: "Listen to me, my dear. This affair must be completely hushed up. Everybody is talking about it.
Fagette rebuked him: "'Beware, Aimeri, lest the château know you not again, lest the park forget your name, lest the pond murmur: "Who is this stranger?"" But she had a cold, and was reading from a manuscript copy full of mistakes. "Don't stand there, Fagette: it's the summer-house," said Romilly. "How do you expect me to know that?" "There's a chair put there."
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