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His reply was: "I was just fourteen, and I played the soubrette characters in an amateur company a line that I could hardly assume with any degree of vraisemblance now."
"Let us have that one, by all means," the marquis exclaimed; "and pray what is the name of this delightful play?" "The Rodomontades of Captain Matamore." "A capital title, upon my word! and has the soubrette a good part in it?" asked his lordship, with a languishing glance at her.
I have a particularly vivid recollection of the singer who played Elizabeth on that occasion. She had originally taken soubrette parts, and went through her role in white kid gloves, dangling a fan.
She had been gracious enough to leave her home in the island valley of Avilion, to play the soubrette parts in the theatre of the university town in which I was fencing and drinking for the improvement of my mind. Upon her little red shoes she tripped across the stage. She let her abbreviated skirts wave in the boldest curves.
The boy who has been to a strict preparatory boarding-school and is just entering upon his college course, whose theatre-goings have been limited to the "shows" to which his father has given him tickets, or to which he has escorted his mother or sisters, and whose wildest dissipations have consisted in a surreptitious cigarette and glass of beer, neither of which he enjoyed, but both of which he pretended to revel in for the sake of being "mannish," will talk knowingly of "the latest soubrette," "a jolly little ballet-dancer," "the wicked ways of this world," and "the dens of iniquity in our large cities."
As soon as possible he had fled up the aisle and across the street to the hotel writing-room. There he had spied Pearlie's good-humored, homely face, and its contrast with the silly, red-and-white countenance of the unlaundered soubrette had attracted his homesick heart. Pearlie had taken some letters from him earlier in the day.
Her soubrette, a pretty and chattering Swiss, whose republican virtue had been corrupted by Paris, as Rome by Corinth, endeavours to divert Mer lady's ennui: she excruciates her beautiful mistress with tattle about the admiration of Lord B and the sighs of Sir Harry.
He enjoyed it thoroughly, for it was above the average. In fifteen minutes, however, the last soubrette disappeared in the wings to the accompaniment of a swirl of music. Her place was taken by a tall, facetious-looking, bald individual, clad in a loose frock coat. He held up his hand for silence. "Ladies 'n' gentlemen," he drawled, "we hope you have enjoyed yourselves.
"And there are others who are NOT carried off, that would like to be," retorted the soubrette, "but the desire is not sufficient; a few charms are needed too." At this point the equerry who had advanced to meet the chariot made a sign to them to stop, and, cap in hand, politely asked if Mlle. Zerbine was among them.
She is making the tour du monde entirely alone, without even a soubrette to carry the ensign, for the purpose of seeing for herself a quoi s'en tenir sur les hommes et les choses on les hommes particularly. Dis donc, Prosper, it must be a drole de pays over there, where young persons animated by this ardent curiosity are manufactured!
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