"Well, now, I don't think that's so awful hard," said a fellow knight of the pencil, one evening as we both leaned upon the rear row of chairs in the old Theatre Comique at St. Louis, since destroyed by fire, and bent our heads forward in an inquisitive look at the ballet of "The Fairy Fountain," or something of that sort. The remark was meant to apply to the evolutions of the premiere as she spun around on one toe and threw a graceful limb up towards the roof of the house every time she gave a whirl.

"If you don't," said I, "you just try it once, and you'll find out exactly how hard it is."

I had made this retort wildly and without knowing, myself, anything much about the difficulties of ballet dancing. It dawned on me that here was an excellent field for inquiry, so having obtained the permission of Manager W.C. Mitchell, who was running the Comique, to go behind the scenes to interview the ballet master; next evening found me early at the stage door. I was soon inside picking my way through the labyrinth of scenery, stage properties, scene shifters, supers, actors and people generally who crowd and jostle each other in this mimic world, and I was in imminent danger every now and then of an impromptu debut before the public, and of finding myself standing figuratively on my head before an unappreciative audience. At last the ballet master—Sig. J.F. Cardella, a thin, wiry man who seemed to be in the decline of life—was found in his tights, leaning in an easy attitude against one of the "wings."

"Bona sera, Signor," I said in the best Italian I could muster.

"Grazia," returned the maitre in the most welcoming manner in the world, as he invited me to a quiet corner where we sat down on a cracker-box.

The object of the visit was briefly explained, and Sig. Cardella rattled off his answers in a ready and intelligible manner, the sweet Italian accents falling from his tongue with the same rapidity and precision that he twinkled his feet in the ballet when occasion required. He said he had made his first appearance in the ballet twenty years before, when he was twenty years of age. He had been put in training, like other children, at the age of twelve years, in the Theatre La Scala—the government school—which has given the world so many famous dancers. Here he remained eight years.

"Children," said Cardella, "are admitted to this school as early as ten years and as late as twelve, and there is a regular routine of study that cannot be finished in less than eight years. It is long and arduous, and especially difficult when it is understood that pupils in this country arrive at stage honors in an immensely less time, in fact in as many months as we are required to put in years of study in the old country."

"I suppose La Scala is under the tuition of the very best masters," said I.

"Oh yes, indeed," responded the maitre de ballet, assuringly; "my first teacher was the celebrated Blozis, and after him Ousse, both French, and both great masters."

"But old?"

"Yes, old; but they had their stage triumphs, and the recollection of these kept their limbs strong and their joints almost as supple as they had been in their younger years, when they themselves went forth from La Scala as premieres, to win the applause of the public."

"Boys and girls are admitted to La Scala?"

"Boys and girls; but all must pass a physical examination just as applicants for army service are required to do. If they are fortunate in having been endowed by nature with health and symmetry of form they are received into the school and enter at once upon its rigorous course of training. Oh, I tell you a ballet school is not the same here as it is in the old country. There must be perfect silence; not a word from the moment the master appears before the line of pupils, and after that nothing but the motions of the hundred or more bodies and the beating of the master's stick upon the floor."

"How long must they practice each day?"

"Well, before they are supposed to enter the academy at all, they must have had one or two years' practice outside. In the academy they have four hours' practice under the direction of the master every day; but many of them do more work than this, especially the most ambitious. I used to practice from eight to twelve hours daily, and even after having left the academy I kept up my daily exercise for increasing the limberness of the joints and the toughness of the cartilages. The more practice, the nearer perfection."

"I suppose the pupils are divided into classes, are they not?"

"Yes; we have four lines of dancers in Italy. You have only three here. We place our coryphees fartherest off from the premiere; you put them alongside. The beginners at La Scala go into the coryphee class, from which they are gradually advanced to the secunda lina, then to the prima lina, and, afterwards, to solo parts, when they practically become premieres."

"But eight years," I suggested, "is a long time to be working without any return in the shape of either money or glory?"

"Ah, there you are mistaken," Cardella answered, pleased to find that newspaper men sometimes make mistakes. "The pupils at La Scala are paid something from the time they enter the academy. They first, while mere coryphees, get thirty francs a month; in the second line, sixty francs; in the third, eighty; and when advanced to solo parts, two hundred francs a month. At this they stop until they finish their schooling, when they take places in the principal theatres, make the usual tour of the provinces and of the continent, and finally settle down, if they have not become famous, to some solid competency, just as I have done myself."

"So much for the dancing boys and girls of Italy; but how about the ballet in this country?"

"Oh, it is nothing like what Europe produces. You have no schools here except the theatres, and girls when they come to learn the ballet, as they have often came to me, ask: 'Do you think I can dance in a week or two?' It is absurd the way they want to do. Why, in my country I practised for eight years before I would be allowed to appear publicly in the theatre, and had practised two years before that at home, and yet these American girls think they can become good dancers in a week or two."

"What do you say to such applicants?"

"I say, 'No, you can't dance in a week or two, nor in a month or two; but if you want to practice for several months I can place you on the stage.' And I say this because I know American girls can make good dancers if they are in earnest and apply themselves hard; they can make passable ballet girls even if they give only a fair share of their attention to the study."

"What do you think of the American ballet?"

"It cannot be good, of course, as long as the public does not give it the attention and patronage it requires to make it good. In the old country the ballet is everything; in this it is comparatively nothing. They make it subservient to everything else on the stage. Managers do not care to pay for good troupes, and the troupes are consequently small and poor."

"But is there not plenty of employment for good ballet dancers?"

"Always. Each company has few that can be ranked as soloists, and this is because good dancers are not numerous. As I have suggested before, the American girl is not sufficiently ambitious in this line; their stage yearnings are mostly for speaking parts on the dramatic stage, and they are not very devout worshippers at the shrine of Terpsichore."

"How are American ballet girls paid?"

"Pretty well; but nothing like what they got before the war. Madame Gallati, who was my wife, before the rebellion, never got less than $150 a week, and after the war was paid $100. Premieres now do not get more than $75, and they are in very good luck when they get that much. The coryphees and others get from $35 a week down as low as $15. And out of this they must furnish their own wardrobes. They must lay out from $5 a week upwards for their stage clothes, and when a ballet is on that requires rich dressing the wardrobes may exceed their whole week's salary; but then, you know, they can prepare for an emergency of this kind by laying by a portion of the salary of the weeks in which no new ballet is brought out. Some of the ballets run for a month, but the usual run is two weeks."

"The maitre does not always dance?"

"No, he dances very seldom; but he earns his money though. He is kept busy two or three hours every day, Sunday included, teaching the old and young ideas of the ballet, how to shoot out their limbs, pose, pirouette, etc. It requires all the time I can give to it to prepare a new ballet. Just as soon as a new one is put on the stage I begin to train the girls in another one, and this training is kept up until the day before the novelty is to be presented to the public. During this time of preparation I have the entire troupe on the stage two hours every morning, except matinee days, when, of course, there is no rehearsal. I show them the steps and they have to practice them. They are supposed to practice some at home, but, of course, the majority of them never do so."

"Have you many applicants now-a-days?"

"Not very many. Once in a while a girl or two will apply, but nearly all of them are unworthy in point of physique to be received, and so are sent away. I do not care so much for nice features, for the ugliest can be embellished sufficiently to look handsome before the foot-lights but good forms are indispensable, and particularly strong, symmetrical limbs. The applicants come from all grades and classes of life, and not a few are young girls of good but obscure connection, who have ambition to win glory and money and all that sort of thing from the public, and who fondly imagine that the ballet girl lives a butterfly existence, instead of being the hardworking, temptation-beset creature that she really is."

"And they all want to get on the stage in a very short time?"

"Yes, the invariable question is, 'Can I dance in a few weeks?' and then they want me to show them the 'steps' and to let them try to duplicate them. I tell them there is no use; if they want to dance they must, as the Irishman says, begin at the beginning. You can't know music without learning the notes; you can't read without knowing the A B C; and so with the ballet, you can't dance without first having acquired its alphabet."

"How do you generally start a pupil out?"

"They have got to go to what we call the 'sideboard' practice first; that is, they must take hold of something for a rest, and go through the first five steps"—and here the maitre got up from the cracker-box, and taking hold of a "wing," placed his feet heel to heel, turned them out straight without bending the knees into an unsightly attitude, and said this was the first step; the four others were much the same as the attitudes taken at different times by elocutionists, one foot being pushed forward and then another. "Then I show them how to do this," and he began twisting one leg after another backward and forward until I thought he would twist both off, but he didn't. "After that," continued Sig. Cardella, "which in this country takes about a month, but in La Scala takes six months, I begin to show them a step or two at a time, and gradually lead them up until they know a little."

"But now and then we see a very fresh and green foot, if I may use the expression, on the stage."

"Oh, of course; we've got to make up a fair number for a troupe sometimes, and I then allow a girl to go on, whom I think smart enough not to make a fool of herself. You see although the American girl is smart and sharp, and pretty original in many other things, she is entirely imitative in dancing. She watches the other girls, and although she may not even be fairly grounded in the fundamental principles of ballet dancing, she frequently faces an audience and does well—sometimes astonishingly well in fact. Some of these girls climb up out of the ranks very fast; others who are lazy and give too much time to flirting and drinking wine, remain in the same line, usually the last, for years, and are really in a ballet master's way all the time."

"How are ballet girls as a class?"

"Some of them," said Cardella, with a shake of his head and an expression of pity on his face, "are a little fond and foolish at times."

"And they have their admirers who bother them, in and out of the theatre, and send them pretty presents, big boquets and such?"

"Oh well, now, I know very little about that. Some of them have families to support, and manage to wear better clothes and more jewelry than their salaries could pay for. I could tell you lots of funny incidents about ballet girls, billet-doux and Billy boys, but you see that nigger act is nearly through, and I've got to go and look after my girls." And with an "Adio, Signor!" and a wave of his hand, he withdrew. I went up to the Alcazar on Monday night to see Bonfanti dance. I have a great respect for Bonfanti. She is a woman of character. When she first danced here the town was wild about her, and one young man, the son of rich and proud parents, offered her his hand in marriage. She hesitated for awhile, but he argued that because he was rich and his parents proud was no reason that he should be made unhappy by her refusal to marry him. She thought it over and came to the conclusion that he was right. So Mlle. Bonfanti became Mrs. Hoffman forthwith. The hue and cry raised by the Hoffmans was so violent that the young man could not stand it, and took his wife to Europe. His family allowed him little or no money, and he, having been very unpractically educated, could find no means of support. He was delicate and he fell ill and died. Then Bonfanti, or Mrs. Hoffman, came to New York to claim her rights as the wife of the son and heir of the Hoffmans, but they behaved in a way that wounded her pride—for ballet dancers as well as Hoffmans have pride—and she declined to accept any aid from them whatever. "As long as I have my feet to dance with," she said, "I can take care of myself, and I want none of their money." So she went back to the ballet, and has been dancing ever since. I couldn't help thinking as I looked at her the other night, that scions of proud New York families had often made worse matches. She has a good and still handsome face, and she dances as gracefully as ever. She is modest even when pointing at the foot-lights with one toe and at the chandelier with the other. Bonfanti is not one of the grinning dancers. Her face wears a rather sad expression, and she only smiles in acknowledgment of the applause of the audience. The competition with Lepri makes her do her best, and it is a regular dancing match every night.