"The piece which we have the honor of playing for you this evening,
gentlemen, is the work of MM. Raoul and de Cursy."
"Why, Nathan is partly responsible," said Lousteau. "I don't wonder
that he looked in."
"Coralie_! Coralie_!" shouted the enraptured house. "Florine, too!"
roared a voice of thunder from the opposite box, and other voices took
up the cry, "Florine and Coralie!"
The curtain rose, Vignol reappeared between the two actresses; Matifat
and Camusot flung wreaths on the stage, and Coralie stooped for her
flowers and held them out to Lucien.
For him those two hours spent in the theatre seemed to be a dream. The
spell that held him had begun to work when he went behind the scenes;
and, in spite of its horrors, the atmosphere of the place, its
sensuality and dissolute morals had affected the poet's still
untainted nature. A sort of malaria that infects the soul seems to
lurk among those dark, filthy passages filled with machinery, and lit
with smoky, greasy lamps. The solemnity and reality of life disappear,
the most sacred things are matter for a jest, the most impossible
things seem to be true. Lucien felt as if he had taken some narcotic,
and Coralie had completed the work. He plunged into this joyous
intoxication.
The lights in the great chandelier were extinguished; there was no one
left in the house except the boxkeepers, busy taking away footstools
and shutting doors, the noises echoing strangely through the empty
theatre.
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