Nothing could be more disinterested or happier than the dreams
with which these announcements filled my mind, dreams which took their
form from the inevitable associations of the words forming the title of
the play, and also from the colour of the bills, still damp and wrinkled
with paste, on which those words stood out. Nothing, unless it were such
strange titles as the _Testament de Cesar Girodot, or Oedipe-Roi_,
inscribed not on the green bills of the Opera-Comique, but on the
wine-coloured bills of the Comedie-Francaise, nothing seemed to me to
differ more profoundly from the sparkling white plume of the _Diamants de
la Couronne_ than the sleek, mysterious satin of the _Domino Noir_; and
since my parents had told me that, for my first visit to the theatre, I
should have to choose between these two pieces, I would study exhaustively
and in turn the title of one and the title of the other (for those were
all that I knew of either), attempting to snatch from each a foretaste of
the pleasure which it offered me, and to compare this pleasure with that
latent in the other title, until in the end I had shewn myself such vivid,
such compelling pictures of, on the one hand, a play of dazzling
arrogance, and on the other a gentle, velvety play, that I was as little
capable of deciding which play I should prefer to see as if, at the
dinner-table, they had obliged me to choose between _rice a l'Imperatrice_
and the famous cream of chocolate.
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