Granville's estate

Before the coachmen took off or covered up all the revealing decorations on their carriages, Madame Bouchard, with the help of Mary, found some ribbons and twigs, and succeeded in giving Louis and Alred It shows Miss Elisa, Miss Margaret's girlfriend, who looks like a stevedore and wears an antler mask—according to Mrs. Busha, the antlers on the mask stretch upwards like branches. It is half a foot long, and those who have seen it will never ignore it.

In this way, Allaide and the others will have a fairly obvious sign that they can use to find Margaret. After all, looking for a woman wearing a distinctive red antler mask in the crowd is definitely better than looking for a woman wearing a mask that covers her whole body. A woman with a domino cloak is easier to come by, and even if Elisa is not with Margaret, she must know where Margaret is.

After making all the preparations, the two carriages drove slowly out of St. George Street and headed for the Misard Opera House.

The Misard Opera House, which has been criticized for its ambiguous reputation, is located in the garrison of Paris, and there is another vaudeville theater frequented by young bourgeois next to it-it is said that it cannot compete with the vaudeville theater. Mr. Misard came up with the extremely daring and ingenious idea of ​​holding a masquerade ball, and after a rather difficult lobbying, he obtained permission from the officials to hold the ball in the opera house. ; in its first year of licensing, the opera house has bounced back from years of losses while making profits that would fill a coffers.

It only costs five francs to buy a ticket to enter this opera house to participate in a masquerade ball, and there are no restrictions on the identity of the participants. The opera house refused.This kind of regulation seems inappropriate to those decent people who abide by traditional morals and respect high and low, and they naturally criticize this opera house-in this way, if a slightly decent person wants to come To participate in this masquerade ball, they have to hide their identities very well; even so, the infamous reputation of the Misard Opera House will not change the high-society aristocrats and semi-society people who want to seek excitement. The idea of ​​coming here to have fun in disguise is at most just to let them add a mask that can cover their entire appearance in addition to the domino cloak.

It was because of the need to conceal their identities that when they were about to approach the Misard Opera House, Alred asked the two carriages to wait on the street beside the Variety Theater, and they walked to the Misard Opera House.

"After you enter the Misard Opera House, don't worry about other people. You only need to find Elisa, or those women wearing domino cloaks, and then use her eyes, voice, and people around her to determine whether she is Margaery. That's enough."

Before leaving the carriage, Alred put on the golden butterfly-shaped half mask for Louis, and carefully told him: "In the Misard Opera House, no matter what strange things you see, don't worry about it, go there to participate There are all kinds of people at the masquerade party, and it's very chaotic-whether you find Margaret or not, you have to go back to the carriage at about 11:30 at the latest, and let Papa Peter take you home Rest; if you find her before I do, stay with her and let Joseph report to me, that boy is very clever, and he will surely find me in the crowd."

"Don't worry, Al, I think we'll find Miss Marguerite in no time, maybe it won't take an hour." Louis said, at this time he was still very optimistic that he would find Miss Marguerite at the Misard Opera House. Finding a girl in a domino cloak, with brown eyes and tawny hair is not very easy, but it is not so difficult that two grown men and a servant who knows Margaret well can't do it. ——The girl is accompanied by a very conspicuously dressed female companion!

"I have no doubt we'll find her, but we'd better do it before dark," said Alred, putting the black butterfly mask on his face, Louis couldn't see his expression, but from Arred Judging by De's pursed lips, which were not covered by the mask, it was obvious that he would not leave the Misard Opera House easily if he did not find the woman he loved.

The street conditions in the city defense area can’t be said to be very bad, but it’s not much better. Occasionally, there will be a mud hole on the stone road that has been in disrepair, allowing unlucky pedestrians to step on the muddy water; but because you don’t need to pay attention to your identity to participate in this kind of masquerade , and will not be kicked out by the host of the ball, even if a few mud spots are splashed on the shoes and trousers, it is not a big deal to be nervous about.

Like Louis and the others, there are many people who walked to the Misard Opera House, all dressed up in strange shapes, quite imaginative and creative: some people looked like a brown bear walking on the street, pieced together into that The low-quality fur of the garment indicated that this guy must be a fur worker by profession; someone turned himself into a walking wooden barrel, with patterns clearly visible on every board, and wore a hat in the shape of a water scoop; Dressed as spear-wielding Indians, covered in colorful scraps of leather, shells and feathers, they showed their meager imaginations of a new land they had never seen.Occasionally they saw people who wore domino cloaks like themselves and wrapped themselves up tightly, but most often they just added some outlandish decorations to their everyday clothes and pretended that they had obeyed them very seriously. People wearing all kinds of masks are the norm at the ball, and many of them look like sewing girls from nearby factories, taking advantage of this rare opportunity to indulge and come here on foot; For young people, this is a rare opportunity to pray for women's favor with only a small amount of money.

When they arrived at the Misard Opera House, the entrance of the theater was already full of people, the ticket office was full of people, and the queue stretched from the dark corridor to the outside of the theater. It seemed that if they wanted to get a ticket It will not only cost five francs, but also five to ten minutes of waiting time.

Joseph got into the front line to inquire, and ran back quickly.

"Sir, there are too many people. Someone said he waited for almost an hour!"

This is not good news, Alred couldn't help but frowned.

At this moment, a man dressed as a clown in a circus walked over on stilts about a pair of feet high. He held a stack of colorful tickets in his hand, and he looked like he had just come from a nearby Like running out on a vaudeville theater stage.

"Gentlemen, do you need to buy tickets for Misar's Masquerade Ball?" asked the ticket seller dressed as a clown. After stepping on stilts, he was a head taller than the people around him, and he looked special among the dark crowd. Conspicuous: "Fifty francs a piece, very cheap!"

"Ah! Don't pretend that we don't know how much a ticket costs!" Joseph jumped up immediately, arguing with the unscrupulous ticket dealer: "If you buy a ticket inside, it only costs five francs. How can you buy it here?" Fifty francs? That's ten times the price!"

"Boy, don't make trouble. I'm talking to the two gentlemen. Why do you interrupt?" Joseph pointed it out so directly, the ticket dealer said to him very unhappy, and turned to continue to sell to Alred and Louis: "Gentlemen, you see that there are so many people queuing up here. By the time it's your turn, the tickets might have been sold out. Isn't this a waste of time? The tickets here are absolutely genuine, and we all bought them in line For those who are going to play, I can sell you a piece for forty francs, for the sake of being so lucky to be able to talk to the two gentlemen."

Speaking of queuing up to buy tickets, the ticket dealers said "we". It seems that there are quite a few people who profited from this masquerade party. Louis looked at Alred and asked him what to do.

"It only costs five francs to buy a ticket from the Misard Opera House. For the sake of queuing up, I can give you ten francs for your tickets," said Alred Folding his hands, he calmly gave the price he thought was appropriate: "Give me three."

"Ah, sir!" exclaimed the ticket-peddler, the strange pattern on his face distorted in anguish: "this is a ticket which I have had a hard time getting--thirty francs a piece." Zhang, this is already very cheap, no matter how cheap it is, I won’t even be able to earn back the money I paid for hiring people to line up!”

"What does that have to do with me?" said Allred, grimly, and for a moment he looked a little like Sologne, completely unmoved by the ticket-peddler's complaints: "I hear music, The dance inside has been going on for a while, and these tickets are worth the price now. I have already given a very good price, if you don’t want to sell it, stay away from us and don’t hinder us.”

"Twenty francs apiece, Monsieur, only twenty francs apiece."

The ticket sellers surrounded them, begging and persuading them, but Alred was unmoved. Seeing that other ticket sellers also noticed this, the clown had no choice but to pull out the ticket from his hand in disappointment. He handed them three of them: "Well, sir, thirty francs in total—oh, you rich people, the richer you are, the less willing you are to open your pockets. No wonder the noble gentlemen are so rich. Oil!"