He Who Gets Slapped

«In the circus.
On the stage stands a spacious, almost gigantic, slightly run-down room with plastered walls. In the left wall, in an arched niche, there is the only window facing the courtyard; the light from it is dull and weak, so even in the daytime people have to turn on the electricity. On the wall opposite the ramp, right under the ceiling, runs a row of small windows with dusty panes: they look somewhere inside the circus and, in the evenings, during the show, they glow brightly, while by day they remain dark. In the same wall, above two stone steps, there is a large door, tightly boarded up and whitewashed with chalk paint. In the right wall, almost at the corner, there is a tall, broad paneled door with a rounded top; it leads to the stables and to the arena: during the day it is dim behind it, in the evening—barely lit…»