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One evening it was occupied.
It was on a Saturday, a day on which the English make all haste to amuse
themselves before the ennui of Sunday. The hall was full.
We say hall. Shakespeare for a long time had to use the yard of an inn
for a theatre, and he called it hall.
Just as the curtain rose on the prologue of "Chaos Vanquished," with
Ursus, Homo, and Gwynplaine on the stage, Ursus, from habit, cast a
look at the audience, and felt a sensation.
The compartment for the nobility was occupied. A lady was sitting alone
in the middle of the box, on the Utrecht velvet arm-chair. She was
alone, and she filled the box. Certain beings seem to give out light.
This lady, like Dea, had a light in herself, but a light of a different
character.
Dea was pale, this lady was pink. Dea was the twilight, this lady,
Aurora. Dea was beautiful, this lady was superb. Dea was innocence,
candour, fairness, alabaster--this woman was of the purple, and one felt
that she did not fear the blush. Her irradiation overflowed the box, she
sat in the midst of it, immovable, in the spreading majesty of an idol.
Amidst the sordid crowd she shone out grandly, as with the radiance of a
carbuncle. She inundated it with so much light that she drowned it in
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