this ground he has never had, and is never likely to have, an equal. His théâtre takes all but the first place in the comedyliterature of the world. For acting he seems to have shown a peculiar aptitude; according to Perrault, a mere gesture with him had more meaning than could be expressed in half an hour's conversation. Ineffective in tragedy, he was quite at home, it is clear, as Alceste in the Misanthrope, as Orgon in Tartuffe, and as the valet in the Fourberies de Scapin. His brilliant genius, moreover, was united to many estimable and endearing qualities as a a man-a keen sense of self-respect, high moral courage, warmth of heart, openhandedness, charm of manner, genuine modesty, and a ready

Molière's contemporaries and immediate successors are but slightly represented at the Comédie Française. Putting aside a doubtful portrait of Madame Beauval, the original Cléanthis in Amphitryon, we find only two of the number, Michel Baron and Marie Champmêlé. In them, however, the foremost players of the Golden Age in France are before us. No such tragedy queen as the latter had previously graced the Paris stage. It was specially for her, his acknowledged mistress, that Racine wrote Bérénice, Bajazet, Mithridate, Iphigénie, and, above all, Phedre. "La Champmêlé," writes the cool-headed Madame de Sévigné to her daughter, "is so extraordinary that you have never seen anything like her in all your life. One goes to hear the actress instead of the play. I went to a performance of Ariane," a tragedy by Thomas Corneille, "simply for her sake. It is an insipid piece; all the characters in it are execrable. But when she comes on a murmur of admiration runs through, the house; everybody is enthralled, and the tears of the audience flow at her despair." Eminently suggestive of the man is the self-satisfied expression on the face of Baron, as painted by François de Troye. He thought sufficiently well of his art to declare that actors ought to be educated in the laps of queens, and sufficiently well of himself to hold that, while every century could boast of a Cæsar, it took twenty centuries to produce a Baron. "For," he once remarked, "the world has had only two great players, Roscius and myself." His vanity, it must be confessed, had the partial excuse of being allied to exceptional gifts. He had been trained for the stage by Molière, and the pupil showed himself to be worthy of his master. In addition to being strikingly handsome in person, he had imagination, sensibility, calculating judgment, originality of thought, and a keen appreciation of anything that might be remarkable in language, incident, and character. His range was wide enough to include such parts as Mithridate, the Cid, the elder Horace, Alceste, and the typical beau of the seventeenth century. Again, he was the first French tragedian to reconcile the demands of theatrical effect with those of natural truth. His declaration had the charm of noble and unaffected simplicity, his deportment that of unstilted grace and picturesqueness. "My comrades," he said, "tell me that even in bursts of

passion I ought not to raise my arms above my head. But if passion would take them there I shall let them go. Passion knows more about it than rules." He also wrote two or three meritorious comedies, the best being the Homme à Bonnes Fortunes. In this, as he took care to hint, he delineated himself as the hero, the Marquis de Moncade. That he was mixed up in many affairs of gallantry there can be no doubt. One of his conquests was a lady who by reason of his calling thought fit to disclaim his acquaintance in public. Nettled by her scorn, he presented himself at a levée in her house. "Monsieur Baron," she asked, in a freezing tone, que cherchezvous ici?" "Mon bonnet de nuit," was the unexpected reply.

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Early in the eighteenth century, as the reign of Louis Quatorze drew to its close, the chief supporters of the Comédie Française were Marie Anne Duclos, Florent Carton Dancourt, and Charlotte Desmares. In the green-room there is a rather effective portrait of the firstnamed by Largillière, representing her as Ariane. It is the peculiar but questionable distinction of Mdlle. Duclos that in tragedy she revived the style of acting which Baron had done so much to extirpate, and which Molière had laughed at in the Impromptu de Versailles. Her method was stately, measured, artificial. She observed syllabic quantities, marked the rhymes in her alexandrines, and rolled forth all speeches with elaborate emphasis. Curiously enough, the town did not object to the change, and as Zénobie in Crébillon's Rhadamiste she obtained a great popular triumph. It remains to be said that Mdlle. Duclos suffered under a sad infirmity of temper. The prospect of rehearsing with her was one from which her colleagues absolutely recoiled. Even in the presence of her audience she could not always preserve her self-control. In Lamotte's Inès de Castro two children are brought in to work upon the feelings of a flinty-hearted grandfather, and the incident gave rise to a roar of merriment in the pit. "Fools!" exclaimed Mdlle. Duclos, who impersonated the heroine, "you are laughing at the finest thing in the piece!" Incredible as it may seem, the spectators, far from resenting her insolence, sat out the performance in respectful silence. In her old age she made herself ridiculous by' marrying a player young enough to be her grandsonthe younger Duchemin-and by remaining

on the stage long after the power to please had left her. As for Mdlle. Desmares, a niece of Mdlle. Champmêlé's, she found wide acceptance both in tragedy and comedy. Among her original parts were Jocaste in Voltaire's Edipe, his first play, and Athalie in Racine's great dramatic poem. Dancourt, unimpressive. in tragedy, excelled in the haut comique and rôles à manteau, and from the outset was one of the favourites of Louis XIV. He wrote about fifty plays, all rather vivacious in incident and dialogue, and collectively forming the most comprehensive picture extant of bourgeois and peasant life in France during his time. At the Comédie Française to-day he is to be found in a bright blue coat, pen in hand, and with an unmistakable air of good birth and good breeding about him.

If the portrait of Adrienne Lecouvreur as the Muse of Tragedy was painted long after her death, as is probably the fact, it will still arouse the keenest interest among those who have read of her meteoric career, her magnetic personality, her almost tragic end. The plays of Corneille and Racine themselves derived a new charm from this daughter of a hat-maker. Her countenance had an ideal beauty; her figure was faultless; her acting possessed all the attractiveness of poetic feeling, pathos, tenderness, grace of bearing, and the natural truth with which Mdlle. Duclos had ventured to dispense. Off the stage, too, she achieved a remarkable success. Few drawing-room sets were thought complete without her, and invitations to her house in the Rue Marais Saint-Germain-the house, by the way, in which Racine died

-were persistently angled for. It was reserved for her to break down the barriers raised between the actress and the best of French society. At heart she longed for a quiet and studious life, especially as consumption had set its mark upon her; but the supposed obligations of her position were allowed to prevail. Among the many admirers surrounding her was the young Comte d'Argental, who however, found no favour in her eyes. Το his mother, Madame de Ferriol, she wrote a letter happily still preserved-the letter of a woman of sense, spirit, and self-respect-explaining that she had spared no pains, even to the extent of leaving Paris for a time, to repel his advances. Perhaps she had already fallen under the influence of Maurice de Saxe, her future husband in all but name. Her

K

very soul seemed to be centred in that too fascinating soldier. She even sold her jewels and plate to provide him with the means of prosecuting his shadowy claim to the Duchy of Courland. In her own words, uttered before his bust in her salon, he was "son univers, son espoir, ses dieux." But the Princesse de Bouillon contrived to supplant her in his mobile affections; her health finally gave way under the shock of his faithlessness, and she died at a comparatively early age. The story that she was poisoned by her triumphant rival is without foundation. Not having renounced the stage, this amiable and gifted woman, for thirteen years one of the idols of Paris, was

HIPPOLYTE CLAIRON.

denied a Christian sepulture-that is to say, was buried in unconsecrated ground at night without the semblance of a rite. For this harsh bigotry the clergy had to pay a terrible price. It did more than anything else to bring upon them the hatred of Voltaire, long one of the actress's warmest friends. In an ode on the incident he had the hardihood

to declare open war against them, to "reproach a frivolous nation for its cowardice in submitting to the shameful yoke they imposed upon it."

Marie Françoise Dumesnil, who came of an old but impoverished Norman family, is to be seen in a red robe trimmed with white fur. Contrary to what you might infer from her appearance, she was a past mistress of the art of moving an audience

to terror.

Une actrice parut: Melpomène elle-même Ceignit son front altier d'un sanglant diadême : Dumesnil est son nom : l'amour et la fureur, Toutes les passions fermentent dans son cœur ; Les tyrans à sa voix vont rentre dans la poudre ; Son geste est un éclair; ses yeux lancent la foudre.

Of the power thus described by Dorat her Cléopatre in Rodogune may be taken as the best illustration. Her aspect in the delivery of the imprecations was so fearful that spectators in the front row of the parterre involuntarily shrank back whenever she swept down to the footlights. On one occasion, after the line

Je maudirais les dieux s'ils me rendaient le jour

she received the compliment of being angrily thumped in the back by an old officer behind the scenes, so completely had he been carried away by the intensity of her play. "Va-t'en, chienne, à tous les diables," he said to her, in a tone loud enough to be heard beyond the stage. But she could do more than produce effects like this, uncommon as they may be.

In Voltaire's Mérope, brought out in 1743, she was at once terrible and pathetic. Especially fine was her acting at the point where Polyphonte orders the soldiers to give the unknown Egysthe a short shrift, and the agonised mother, though knowing that the avowal will only confirm the tyrant in his fell determination, is driven to exclaim, "Arrête, il est mon fils!" Previously, even in scenes of the stormiest passion, actresses had been accustomed to measure their steps; Mdlle. Dumesnil, always inclining to the natural, darted across the stage with the rapidity of lightning to the protection of her threatened son. "It appears to me," slily remarked the octogenarian Fontenelle, "that the performances of Mérope will do a good deal of honour to M. de Voltaire, and the reading of it a good deal more to Mdlle. Dumesnil." The author frankly expressed a similar opinion. "I doubt," he said, "whether Merope will succeed out of doors as well as it does in the theatre. It is Mdlle. Dumesnil who makes the piece." Elsewhere he asks, "What do you think of an actress who keeps an audience in tears for three acts in succession?" Probably she owed something to his teaching. At rehearsal he complained that she did not throw sufficient heat into her invectives against Polyphonte. "To

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act as you wish," she said, "I ought to have a very devil within me." 'Precisely," he replied; " to excel in any art one must be possessed of a devil."

Let us now pass on to the portrait of Hippolyte Clairon as the Muse of Tragedy. The story of her life is full of interest, but can only be glanced at here. Of humble parentage, she had a neglected and intensely wretched childhood, occasionally brightened by dreams of a brilliant success at the theatre. And these dreams were completely realised when, in 1743, at the early age of twenty, but with eight years' experience in her favour, she appeared at the Comédie Française. In characters of the sterner order, particularly those including an element of lofty and inflexible pride, she was allowed on all sides to be supreme. Phèdre, Médée, Hermione, Zénobie, Didon, Cléopatre-these and others derived from her a new force and beauty. To breadth of conception she united an unsurpassed power of expression. According to Thomas, the eulogist of Descartes, she could paint the passions, not only in their more obvious manifestations, but in all their shades and differences. One night, to quote a Danish writer, "she went through a number of opposite feelings-soft melancholy, despair, languid tenderness, raving fury, scorn, and melting love. She was wonderful at these transitions. But she never put off the woman; in the midst of violent rage she was always feminine. When she bent her forehead with that cloudy look, with that cry, we were all aghast.' For some years she owed more to art than nature. Her style, while full of dignity and grace, was formal, grandiose, statuesque. Presently, at the instance of Marmontel, she tried the effect of a simpler declamation, with the result that she never departed from it afterwards. Her greatness as Aménaïde in Voltaire's Tancrede is attested by no less a judge than Diderot. "Ah, mon cher maître," he writes to the author, "if you could see her crossing the stage half leaning upon the executioners present, her knees threatening to give way, her eyes closed, and her arms hanging down as though in death-if, too, you could hear her cry on recognising Tancrède -you would be convinced more than ever that acting sometimes has a pathos beyond all the resources of oratory." Historical accuracy of costume found in her its first practical advocate. As Electre, for example, instead of the hoop and ample mourning robe of old, she came forward

in "the simple dress of a slave, with her hair dishevelled and her arms in long chains." Personally, it appears, she was remarkable for high spirit, waywardness, impulsive generosity, and a somewhat theatrical and disdainful air. Her career on the stage came to an abrupt and unexpected end. With four of her comrades, she was sent to prison for refusing to be seen on the stage with a player who had been mixed up in a discreditable transaction, but who, thanks to a pretty daughter, had sufficient influence at court to retain his place in the theatre. Though in the fulness of her genius and beauty,

she resented this indignity to herself by throwing up the profession in which she had occupied the first rank for over twenty years, and no argument or entreaty could do more than shake her resolution for a few moments. Voltaire immortalised her in a single sentence; it is one of the proudest boasts of the braggart in Candide that he has made her acquaintance in society.

Henry Louis Lekain is shown to us by Lenoir as Jenghiz Khan in the Orphelin de la Chine. Never, perhaps, has a player been more heavily handicapped by physical drawbacks than this goldsmith's son, who, after receiving his education at the Collége Mazarin, was voluntarily prepared by Voltaire for the stage. His figure was short and ungraceful, his face flat and round, his voice harsh and hollow. But

an

under the inspiring influence of the scene he underwent a sort of transformation. "His physical disadvantages," American essayist said of a great English actor, "seemed to pass miraculously away before the glowing energy of his spirit; to the imaginative spectator he visibly expanded, and filled the stage, and towered over the inferior actors in larger physical dimensions; his action, expression, countenance, intelligent emphasis, and vigour of utterance lifted, kindled, glorified, as it were, his merely human attributes, and bore him, and those who gazed and listened, triumphantly onward in a whirl of passion, concentration of will, and a chaos of emotion." In the words of Grimm, the petit bourgeois of the Rue St. Denis became a hero of

ANNE FRANÇOISE MARS.

we

Homeric proportions. "Lekain," are told in the Réflexions sur l'Art Théâtral, "had extreme sensibility and far-reaching intelligence. His exquisite feeling, the workings of an ardent and impassioned mind, the faculty of plunging entirely into the situation he represented, the perception, so delicately fine, that enabled him to bring out all shades of character -these embellished his irregular features and gave him an irresistible charm." Nothing less than terrible was his aspect when, as the hero in Sémiramis, he staggered from the tomb of Ninus-when, amidst the play of thunder and lightning, "with his arms bare and bloody, his hair dishevelled, his face haggard, his knees. trembling, he stopped awe-stricken at the portal, wrestling, so to speak, with the

He has

bolts of Jove himself." It says much for Voltaire's penetration and taste that he should have instantly seen the germs of such a genius. Lekain's progress at the Comédie was at first obstructed by an envious cabal, but after a performance of Zaïre at court in 1752 his path was strewn with roses. "Why," asked Louis XV., "have the sublime talents of this man been so unjustly depreciated? made me weep-I, who scarcely ever weep. Let him be admitted to the theatre forthwith." The actor profited by his influence there to effect further improvements in costume, even to the point of giving Oreste a dress not widely dissimilar from that of old Greece. His conversation was marked by wide reading, good sense, and sometimes wit. "How is it," asked Marie Antoinette as he bowed her to her coach one evening, "that such bad pieces as the one I have just seen get received? "Madame," he replied, "c'est le secret de la comédie." He showed the utmost veneration for Voltaire, who always treated him as an adopted son, and was never happier than to find him among the guests at Ferney. By a singular fatality, the master had never seen the pupil on the boards of the Comédie Française, and it was partly to fill up this blank in his life that, after an exile of about twenty-six years, the philosopher set out on his last visit to Paris. But the meeting to which they both looked forward so eagerly was not to take place; Lekain died rather suddenly a few hours before his benefactor's arrival.

Many other great players whose names are associated with the ancien régime are still awaiting our notice. Conspicuous in the room is a marble bust of Marie Anne Botot Dangeville. Her acting was irresistible in its verve, archness, refinement, and quickness of perception.

Il me semble la voir, l'œil brillant de gaîté, Parler, agir, marcher avec légèreté; Piquant sans apprêt, et vive sans grimace, A chaque mouvement découvrir une grâce. Of Pierre Louis Dubus Préville we see both a portrait and a bronze bust, the latter by no less a hand than Houdon's. The double honour is not undeserved. Equally at home in humour and tenderness, competent to illustrate the most delicate shades of character, and always exercising his power in the spirit of a true artist, Préville acquired a unique individuality on the stage. His Sosie in Amphitryon, his Larissolle in the Mercure Galant, his Crispin in the Légataire