The Latin Conception Of A Theater Is Of Something Rather More Barnlike
Than Ours, But This Theater Was Of A
Sufficiently handsome presence, and
when we had been carried into it by the physical pressure exerted upon
us by the
Crowd at the entrance we found its vastness already thronged.
The seats in the orchestra were mostly taken; the gallery under the roof
was loud with the impatience for the play which the auditors there
testified by cries and whistlings and stampings until the curtain
lifted; the tiers of boxes rising all round the theater were filled with
family parties. The fathers and mothers sat in front with the children
between them of all ages down to babies in their nurses' arms. These
made themselves perfectly at home, in one case reaching over the edge of
the box and clawing the hair of a gentleman standing below and openly
enjoying the joke. The friendly equality of the prevailing spirit was
expressed in the presence of the family servants at the back of the
family boxes, from which the latest fashions showed themselves here and
there, as well as the belated local versions of them. In the orchestra
the men had promptly lighted their cigars and the air was blue with
smoke. Friends found one another, to their joyful amaze, not having met
since morning; and especially young girls were enraptured to recognize
young men; one girl shook hands twice with a young man, and gurgled with
laughter as long as he stood near her.
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