This play, I saw, was by his son, and I expected a family
resemblance. A couple of jack-rabbits, run in off the prairie, could not
have been more innocent of what awaited them than were Lena and I.
Our excitement began with the rise of the curtain, when the moody Varville,
seated before the fire, interrogated Nanine. Decidedly, there was a new
tang about this dialogue. I had never heard in the theatre lines that were
alive, that presupposed and took for granted, like those which passed
between Varville and Marguerite in the brief encounter before her friends
entered. This introduced the most brilliant, worldly, the most
enchantingly gay scene I had ever looked upon. I had never seen champagne
bottles opened on the stage before--indeed, I had never seen them opened
anywhere. The memory of that supper makes me hungry now; the sight of it
then, when I had only a students' boarding-house dinner behind me, was
delicate torment. I seem to remember gilded chairs and tables (arranged
hurriedly by footmen in white gloves and stockings), linen of dazzling
whiteness, glittering glass, silver dishes, a great bowl of fruit, and the
reddest of roses. The room was invaded by beautiful women and dashing
young men, laughing and talking together. The men were dressed more or
less after the period in which the play was written; the women were not.
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