there fifty angels, ten Indian rajahs, thirty knights, a hundred mandarins or Roman centurions, but not a single, solitary pair of common-or-garden summer trousers. So there is nothing for it but to make the best of a pair of old military trousers with straps, just like those that Eugène Onegin wears in the opera. Nothing pleases the theatrical wardrobe-man’s heart so much as some similar aged article of clothing, consecrated by the various plays in which it has appeared with success on the bodies of the celebrated actors who are the glory of the theatre.
On the first night the men from the theatrical tailor’s shop all crowd into the wings, and their foreman follows with fascinated eyes the tragedian’s every moment. Complications follow complications: no one knows whether there will be a solitary suicide or a whole massacre; the tragedian is tormented by an intrigue; poor innocence suffers; the tragedian acts like a god, places his hand upon his heart, declaims magnificent verses, sits down, stands up, draws his sword,
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