received a salary of one hundred and sixty
guineas yearly. Madame Castellan, in 1849,
received the same sum monthly. La
Guimard, a fascinating dancer who delighted
Paris seventy years ago, when she was in the
full height of her success and her beauty,
received a yearly salary of a hundred and
eighty guineas. In 1849 Carlotta Grisi was
paid more than twice that sum for her
exertions during a quarter of a year. The
permanent principal tenor at the Paris Opéra,
who is engaged for four years, dating from
April, 1851, receives three thousand a year
as his fixed salary.

Salaries have also risen at the Comédie
Française, of which M. Regnier is known in
England as a worthy representative. The
members of the Comédie Française, however,
are content to receive salaries below the
market value of their talents, considering the
loss of income more than compensated by the
honour that belongs to their position, and
the prospect of a retiring pension. Of such
pensioners the Comédie Française has twenty-
five, the Opéra sixteen, making in all forty-
one people whose bread is taken at the
theatre door, in addition to those that have
been already mentioned.

The pay of a supernumerary varies from
about three pounds seven shillings to three
pounds fifteen shillings a month for men, and
to women it is about half the former sum, or
one pound thirteen and sixpence. Casual
service is also done by labourers, water-carriers,
artists' models, and others, who are paid by
the evening according to their fitness, at
rates varying from twopence-halfpenny to one
shilling and eightpence. Sometimes leave is
obtained to employ soldiers as supernumeraries
in military pieces in the Théâtre National.
At the Opéra, under Louis the Sixteenth,
supernumeraries were systematically chosen
from among the soldiers of the French
Guards.

It has been said, that there were in Paris
seven hundred and ninety-three of the more
individual performers—artists, as our
neighbours call them. That was the number in
the beginning of the year 1850. On the first
of January in the present year, although two
considerable theatres were closed, the number
of performers in Paris had increased by
twenty; we reckon their number now,
therefore, at eight hundred and thirteen,
and they may be grouped in the manner
following:—

Eighty-four (namely, forty-four men and
forty women) devote themselves to tragedy
and comedy. Two hundred and eighty-four
(one hundred and forty-four men and one
hundred and forty women) act in vaudevilles.
The contrast in the numbers is instructive.
The irregular drama is supported by eighty-
six sons and fifty-one daughters, being one
hundred and thirty-seven in all. There are
one hundred and forty-six children of song,
ninety-two being singers and fifty-four
songstresses. Fourteen gentlemen and forty-three
ladies are artists in dancing. Forty men and
twenty-four women act in pantomime, vaudeville,
or any miscellaneous way. Twenty-one
men and twenty women are performers on the
backs of horses. These make up the whole
number of eight hundred and thirteen.

Chorus singers, and members of the corps
de ballet have also increased in number
during the last two years. According to the
account taken in January 1852, excluding a
hundred who are stage pupils, their number
is five-hundred and seventy-five, among whom
the men are in a minority of twenty-five. Of
the whole number, men and women, one
hundred and twenty are attached to corps de
ballet, and four hundred and fifty-five are
chorus singers.

We now quit the people who are living by
their toil upon the space between the curtain
and the scenes; for very many others have to
be considered. Before the curtain is the
orchestra. To the musicians there is paid
yearly in Paris, a sum which a little exceeds
twenty-five thousand pounds. Including the
conductors, the whole number of musicians
living on this fund is six hundred and thirty-
nine.

We have next to take into account the
persons employed in the service of the theatre,
at the box-office, money and check-takers,
small officials, keepers, and superintendents
of various kinds, sweepers and scourers,
lamplighters, and others. Offices like these find
occupation for about five hundred and twenty
men and fifty-five women, for whose livelihood
provision is made by payments which
amount to an aggregate of about fourteen
thousand five hundred and eighty pounds.

In the preceding calculation account is not
taken of the box openers. These, in the
French theatres, are generally women. In the
twenty-five theatres of Paris, four hundred
and sixty-seven women, and six men, serve
as box-keepers. Except in the Comédie
Française and the Lazari, they receive no
other pay than the gratuities of the public.
At the Comédie Française they buy the
appointment, paying for it eighty-three
pounds, six and eightpence. The salary
they receive is at least equal to the interest
of their money, at most twelve pounds ten
shillings a year. The average income
derived by each boxkeeper from the gratuities
of the public in one of the largest theatres of
Paris does not amount to more than twenty-
five pounds a year, though in busy years some
lucky women have obtained as much as eighty
or ninety pounds.

Still before the curtain we have higher
officials—stage-managers, secretaries, cashiers,
and others—one hundred and twenty-five in
number. To these we may add prompters,
and copyists of music and manuscript, to the
number of fifty-five. These draw from the
theatres for their livelihood a sum of sixteen
thousand two hundred and fifty pounds.