This price admitted you only to the pit, but as
you were perfectly free to enter any box in which there were persons
of your acquaintance, the admission in the case of a bachelor,
permanently or temporarily such, was all that was necessary to him.
And the price of the boxes was small in proportion.
These boxes were indeed the drawing-rooms in which very much of
the social intercourse of the _beau monde_ was carried on. The
performances were not very frequently changed (two operas frequently
running through an entire season), and people went four or five times
a week to hear, or rather to be present at, the same representation.
And except on first nights or some other such occasion, or during the
singing of the well-known tit-bits of any opera, there was an amount
of chattering in the house which would have made the hair of a
_fanatico per la musica_ stand on end. There was also an exceedingly
comfortable but very parsimoniously-lighted large room, which was
a grand flirting place, where people sat very patiently during the
somewhat long operation of having their names called aloud, as their
carriages arrived, by an official, who knew the names and addresses of
us all. We also knew _his_ mode of adapting the names of foreigners to
his Italian organs. "Hasa" (Florentine for _casa_) "Tro-lo-pe," with
a long-drawn-out accent on the last vowel, was the absolutely fatal
signal for the sudden breaking up of many a pleasant chat.
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