THE ABONNÉS FINANCE PERFORMANCES

THOSE TYCOONS FINANCED THE SHOWS BY RESERVING THE MOST EXPENSIVE SEATS 

They might use them for their families or visitors from the provinces, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Fridays for a year...

By Honoré Daumier

But the main attraction was dinner in a salon next to the now sealed-off door the last page shows. There leaders of industry, commerce and culture connected, and met the most venerable nobility in a context as intimate and exclusive as that of a salon... while waiting for the end of the ballet inserted at the end of operas' second act.

They reached it through an entrance created for them alone, after leaving their carriages in the huge space next to their rotunda. 

 This view, 

from a window of the passage on the last page,

 is the only way to perceive the void: more later.  

The rectangles cover tables of a restaurant that occupies a third of the void.

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Next,
 Detour: ballet, an art of the French court