566 BALLET IN ITS GLORY. life of a girl when her figure is apt to be what old-fashioned people call raw-boned. She was tall, thin and pale. Her face was not handsome. Her form gave no evidence of physical strength. She was received in a hush of silence. "Let us see,' this great audience seemed to say, "what you really can do in this poetic art." Any one who could have connected sensuality, grossness, with this girl, would have been baser than a sybarite; and yet her dress was the conventional dress of ballet-dancers-short to the calf of the leg, but thickly clad above. She began. O grace, you never found a prototype till now! O painting, sculpture, you paled before this supple, elastic, firm yet dainty tread! At the conclusion of her first movement, when with a gush of sweet music she sprang like a fawn to the footlights, and extending her slender arms and delicate hands towards the audience, as if to ask, "Come, what is the verdict on me now?" a burst of enthusiastic applause, loud shouts of "brava," "bravissima," "c'est maguifique," wavings of perfumed handkerchiefs, a deluge of sweet flowers, formed the response. The whole evening was a series of triumphs. The Emperor and Empress sent an aid-de-camp behind the scenes to offer her the imperial congratulations. Marie Taglioni, accompanied by her noble husband, sought the girl also, and taking from her breast a magnificent diamond star, which had been given her in former days by the Emperor of Russia-" Here," said she, "take this-the queen of dance, Marie Taglioni, is dead-long live the Queen, Emma Livry." As I passed out amongst the dense crowd which composed the audience, I saw a woman of middle age, and respectably dressed, leaning against one of the marble col THE DANCER'S MOTHER. 567 umns in the vestibule. Her face was flushed, and she was wiping tears from her eyes. "You weep, Madame?" said a gentleman who was passing. "Yes, monsieur," she replied, "but it is with joy. Who would not be proud of such a daughter, and of such a tribute to her genius?" The early death of this young artist was a sad event. If she had lived she would have conferred honor upon an art which has so much to degrade it-so much to contend against. The life of the ballet girl is far from being that roseate and delightful thing which many people picture it to be. A peep into the dancing green room of the opera, or of a theatre in which a ballet is progressing, will show the life the ballet dancer leads. One striking peculiarity of her public life is that a ballet dancer can never sit down for one minute either on or off the stage, after she is dressed for the evening's performance. This is the standing rule with dancing girls. If they sat down even once, their tarletan skirts would be crushed, their silk leggings (known as "tights") would be wrinkled about their knees; in short, they would be unpresentable fairies, untidy Undines, or whatever they per sonate. The audience sees these pretty creatures dancing away for dear life to rapid music, with beating chest aud flushed face, and no doubt some charitable souls say to themselves, "Ah, well, she will rest as soon as she gets off the stage. She will sit down and have a good rest." Nothing of the kind. She will stand up till midnight if the performance lasts so long, leaning her aching back against a canvas scene or a damp stone wall; laying her hot forehead against some iron clamp; but never once sitting down-never while she is behind the scenes. 568 HARD LIFE OF DANCING GIRLS. One who visited the dancing green room of the grand opera in Paris relates that "at night it is brilliantly lighted, and the effects of the gas-jets is greatly increased by the numerous large mirrors which almost conceal the walls. In front of each of these mirrors a wooden post a little higher than one's waist, is securely planted, and before a dancing-girl'sets off,' she raises one foot after the other until she places it horizontally on one of these posts, where she keeps it for some time, then quitting this position and taking hold of the post with one hand, she practices all her steps, and after having in this way 'set herself off,' she waters the floor with a handsome watering pot, and before the large mirrors, which reach down to the mopboard, she goes through all the steps she is about to dance on the stage. The leading dancing-girls commonly wear old pumps and small linen gaiters, very loose, in order to avoid soiling their stockings or stocking-net. When the 'call-boy' gives his first notice, they hasten to throw off their gaiters and put on new pumps, chosen for their softness and suppleness, whose seams they have carefully stitched beforehand. The call-boy' appears at the door, 'Mesdemoiselles, now's your time! the curtain is up!' and the flock of dancing girls hasten to the stage. Among the ballet-corps one sees the strangest vicissitudes of fortune, the most wonderful 'ups' and 'downs' of life. Some who yesterday were glad to receive the meanest charity of their comrades, who joyfully accepted old dancing pumps, and wore them for shoes, and faded bonnets and thrice-mended clothes, appear to-day in lace, silks, cashmeres, with coachman, valet, carriage and pair! The sufferings, the privations, the fatigue and the courage of these poor girls, ere the miserable worm, the chrysalis, is metamorphosed into the brilliant butterfly, cannot be conceived. Bread and water support the life of more than one of them; many would be glad to feel sure of it regu larly twice a-day. A great number live three or four miles from the Grand Opera, a distance which they trudge almost shoeless to their matutinal dancing lesson, rehearsals, and evening performances, and on their return home, long after midnight, in the the summer's rains and the winter's snows, nothing buoys them up but that bladder which kept Trotty Veck afloat on the stream of life: 'There's a good time coming, Trotty; there's a good time coming!' They laugh and say, 'I suffer to-day, but perhaps I shall be rich to-morrow."" The story of Mlle. Eulalie is related by a Boston writer, who had it from a friend in Paris. "They had just brought out," said the friend, "a great spectacular piece, of rare attraction, requiring a very large corps du ballet. The sub-manager, a friend of mine, invited me behind the scenes the first night of representation. I went and had my usual chat with my favorites in the corps, in the green-room, before the rising of the curtain. While in the green-room, I noticed, sitting quite apart from the girls, a young dancer whom I had seen before a few times, and whom I had always spoken to in vain; she never would answer me; and I always noticed that she treated all the other gallants in the same way. On this evening she was sitting apart, and I observed tears were rolling down her cheeks, which were heavily rouged. She was dressed, very sparsely, in pink gauze. I approached her, and, touched by her evident depression, asked what the matter was. She shook her head and turned away. One of the girls, a bold hussy, on this came up, and said, ‘Can you guess what's the trouble with our fine little Mademoiselle Eulalie? Why, she's crying because she has got to appear in that light dress, and offer the king, in the play, a goblet of wine, kneeling. Mon Dieu, how terrible! Comme c'est affreux! And the speaker bounded off laughing. We Frenchmen are so hardened by our devil-me 570 A MODEST BALLET GIRL. care life, that we are seldom susceptible to pity. But I was really touched by Mlle. Eulalie's emotion; perhaps it was because she was unusually pretty, and so wonderfully fresh and innocent. During the play I saw her on the stage. The poor thing was forcing a smile through the first acts; when it came to the place where she had to kneel and thus expose herself to the rude gaze of the parterre, she hesitated, and trembled like a leaf; and the tears came once more, and by an agonizing effort were forced back again. When she arose her modest color so mounted to her face as to quite conceal the rouge paint; and after the last act she went into the green-room again -and fainted. I felt interested, and, roue as I am, did from my heart feel for the poor thing. This wasn't sham, and I'm a good judge. In about a week, after a good deal of effort, I managed, by getting the sub-manager to introduce me, to get acquainted with Mlle. Eulalie. After an acquaintance in which I had to win her confidence by the most gradual steps-for she was most timid, as well as modest-I learned her history, and, with it, to respect and venerate this same simple ballet girl. Her real name was Françoise Tellier-Eulalie was her fancy stage name. She was eighteen. Her father was dead; her mother had re-married a man who had till within a year been a joiner, but meeting with an accident, had become imbecile, and was the inmate of an asylum. Her mother was a very sickly but pious Protestant woman, and by her second husband had a family of three small girls. Since her husband's misfortunes she had hardly been able to work at all; what she did was to copy documents for lawyers and libraries; for she had had a good education, and you know that this has always been a regular occupation for many French people of the lower bourgeois order. Mme. Reynard, whose father had been poor, had learned it in her younger days, and had since |