QUARTIER LATINITIES 43 



it admirably clear to them that they have met their 

 match, and that the petit benefice will never be yielded 

 by her. 



Within the gi-eat theatre, squadrons of faces, and 

 lines of light, curve in tiers from dress-circle to top 

 gallery; even in the top gallery but one, the height, 

 and the slant of heads below, would make many 

 people giddy. It is very hot, so hot that for the first 

 five minutes the brain seems to boil, and a disposition 

 to burst into maniac laughter at the mere idea of 

 having paid to endure such misery is with difficulty 

 restrained ; to reflect that eels become used to skinning 

 brings no solace ; in such an atmosphere as this to be 

 skinned would seem the sole means of making life 

 endurable. Fans are going in all quarters of the house ; 

 with the air at this temperature they must merely 

 produce a sense of friction. The art students leaven 

 the lump downwards as far as the amphitheatre, and 

 she to whom fortune has allotted us companion seats 

 seems to think little of cither the heat or the height. 

 She has often sat in the topmost gallery, and even 

 now certain of her friends, seated in that dizzy circle 

 of Tophet, are signalling to her the envy of which she 

 is already pleasurably aware. They fan themselves 

 with their hats and eat a great many oranges ; never- 

 theless they also seem to enjoy themselves. 



All that is to be seen of Herr Grieg is a mop of 

 greyish hair round a small bald spot, but his music 

 can be heard to perfection, and it makes one forget 

 the heat. The art student enjoys herself tremendously. 

 She is an enthusiast about Grieg; she belabours the 

 floor with a broad boot sole and an energy that envelops 

 Iier and her neighbours in a cloud of dust and induces 

 a visible animosity in a young American gentleman 

 who sits in front. He has been at some pains to explain 

 to a servile female relative that he finds the per- 



