elieu, but
for the Boulevards; her peculiar, intensely Parisian intonation would
sound out of place in the Maison de Moliere. (Of course if Mlle.
Fargueil has ever received overtures from the Francais, my sagacity is
at fault--I am looking through a millstone. But I suspect she has not.)
Frederic Lemaitre, who died last winter, and who was a very great
actor, had been tried at the Francais and found wanting--for those
particular conditions. But it may probably be said that if Frederic was
wanting, the theatre was too, in this case. Frederic's great force was
his extravagance, his fantasticality; and the stage of the Rue de
Richelieu was a trifle too academic. I have even wondered whether
Desclee, if she had lived, would have trod that stage by right, and
whether it would have seemed her proper element. The negative is not
impossible. It is very possible that in that classic atmosphere her
great charm--her intensely _modern_ quality, her supersubtle
realism--would have appeared an anomaly. I can imagine even that her
strange, touching, nervous voice would not have seemed the voice of the
house. At the Francais you must know how to acquit yourself of a
_tirade_; that has always been the touchstone of capacity. It would
probably have proved Desclee's stumbling-block, though she could utter
speeches of six words as no one else surely has ever done. It is true
that Mlle. Croizette, and in a certain sense Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, are
rather weak at their _tirades_; but then old theatre-goers will tell
you that these young ladies, in spite of a hundred attractions, have no
business at the Francais.

In the course of time the susceptible foreigner passes from that
superstitious state of attention which I just now sketched to that
greater enlightenment which enables him to understand such a judgment
as this of the old theatre-goers. It is borne in upon him that, as the
good Homer sometimes nods, the Theatre Francais sometimes lapses from
its high standard. He makes various reflections. He thinks that Mlle.
Favart rants. He thinks M. Mounet-Sully, in spite of his delicious
voice, insupportable. He thinks that M. Parodi's five-act tragedy,
"Rome Vaincue," presented in the early part of the present winter, was
better done certainly than it would have been done upon any English
stage, but by no means so much better done than might have been
expected. (Here, if I had space, I would open a long parenthesis, in
which I should aspire to