Florine often has no time to sup.

On returning from a play, which lasts, in these days, till after midnight, she does not get to bed before two in the morning; but she must rise early to study her part, order her dresses, try them on, breakfast, read her love-letters, answer them, discuss with the leader of the "claque" the place for the plaudits, pay for the triumphs of the last month in solid cash, and bespeak those of the month ahead.

In the days of Saint-Genest, the canonized comedian who fulfilled his duties in a pious manner and wore a hair shirt, we must suppose that an actor's life did not demand this incessant activity.

Sometimes Florine, seized with a bourgeois desire to get out into the country and gather flowers, pretends to the manager that she is ill.
But even these mechanical operations are nothing in comparison with the intrigues to be carried on, the pains of wounded vanity to be endured,--preferences shown by authors, parts taken away or given to others, exactions of the male actors, spite of rivals, naggings of the stage manager, struggles with journalists; all of which require another twelve hours to the day.

But even so far, nothing has been said of the art of acting, the expression of passion, the practice of positions and gesture, the minute care and watchfulness required on the stage, where a thousand opera-glasses are ready to detect a flaw,--labors which consumed the life and thought of Talma, Lekain, Baron, Contat, Clairon, Champmesle.