In the dark auditorium large linen sheets protected the balcony and the boxes.

The orchestra was covered with a huge dust-cloth, which, being turned back at the edges, left room for a few human figures, indistinctly seen in the gloom: actors, scene-shifters, costumiers, friends of the manager, mothers and lovers and actresses.

Here and there shone a pair of eyes from the black recesses of the boxes.
They were rehearsing, for the fifty-sixth time, _La Nuit du 23 octobre 1812_, a celebrated drama, dating twenty years back, which had not as yet been performed in this theatre.

The actors knew their parts, and the following day had been chosen for that last private rehearsal which on stages less austere than that of the Odeon is known as "the dressmakers' rehearsal." Nanteuil had no part in the play.

But she had had business at the theatre that day, and, as she had been informed that Marie-Claire was execrable in the part of General Malet's wife, she had come to have a peep at her, concealed in the depths of a box.
The great scene of the second act was about to begin.