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There were, at that time at the opera, several figurantes, singers and dancers, ugly rather than plain, without any talent, who, in spite of it all, lived in great comfort; for it is admitted that at the opera a girl must needs renounce all modesty or starve.
On the one hand, it had none of that affectation of superior taste evinced in marqueterie and gilding, or the more picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs and mediaeval curiosities which prevails in the daintier abodes of fastidious bachelors; nor, on the other hand, had it the sporting character which individualizes the ruder juveniles qui gaudent equis, betrayed by engravings of racers and celebrated fox-hunts, relieved, perhaps, if the Nimrod condescend to a cross of the Lovelace, with portraits of figurantes, and ideals of French sentiment entitled, "Le Soir," or "La Reveillee," "L'Espoir," or "L'Abandon."
The private soldiers were almost to a man Democrats, but the chance to escape the long and irksome evenings of the camp and join the frolic and adventure of the street made most of them willing enough to play the part of claque or figurantes. Jack, of course, refused to take part in these scenic rallies, making known his sentiments in vehement disdain.
"But this way, if you please...." In the wake of the functionary, Lanyard traversed that frowsy anteroom where doubtful wasters are herded on suspicion in company with the corps of automatic Bacchanalians and figurantes, to the main restaurant, the inner sanctum toward which the naive soul of the travel-bitten Anglo-Saxon aspires so ardently.
At length, his partner, tired of spinning, sank upon a sofa, like a child's top, when it reels and falls. "You do not like the waltz?" said an elderly French gentleman, remarking the expression of Flemming's countenance. "O yes; among the figurantes of the Opera. But I confess, it sometimes makes me shudder to see a young rake clasp his arms round the waist of a pure and innocent girl.
The different periods of my life passed before me; the time when I sate on the hindmost bench in the box of the female figurantes, as well as that in which, full of childish superstition, I knelt down there upon the stage and repeated the Lord's Prayer, just before the very place where I now sate among the first and the most distinguished men.
There was something meretricious in Sir Walter's ballad-rhymes; and like those who keep opera figurantes, we were willing to have our admiration shared, and our taste confirmed by the town: but the Novels are like the betrothed of our hearts, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and we are jealous that any one should be as much delighted or as thoroughly acquainted with their beauties as ourselves.
But the first and second Buffa were there; and Signor Sc , and Signora Ch , and Madame V , with a countless cavalcade besides of chorusers, figurantes, at the sight of whom Merry afterwards declared, that "then for the first time it struck him seriously, that he was about to marry a dancer." But there was no help for it. Besides, it was her day; these were, in fact, her friends and kinsfolk.
He was the man who made the well-known and characteristic remark, "You can do everything with bayonets except sit on them!" We had a constant succession of merry-makings. There was a state performance at the San Carlo, with a ballet danced by very pretty figurantes, whose tights were pink to below their knees only, the rest was apple-green.
Entire social classes and casts that formerly commanded first parts, are to-day utilized to make up stage decorations or as figurantes. Plays representing the glory of knighthood or minnesingers would only amuse to-day, no matter how serious they were intended to appear.
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