en pleurs dans sa haute demeure."

With the accustomed pedantry, M. De Banville, in the scene of the
banquet, makes the cup-bearer go round dealing out a little wine, with
which libation is made, and then the feast goes on in proper Homeric
fashion. These overwrought details are forgotten in the parting scenes,
where Deidamie takes what she knows to be her last farewell of Achilles,
and girds him with his sword:

"La lame de l'epee, en sa forme divine
Est pareille a la feuille austere du laurier!"

Let it be noted that each of M. De Banville's more serious plays ends
with the same scene, with slight differences. In _Florise_ (never put on
the stage) the wandering actress of Hardy's troupe leaves her lover, the
young noble, and the shelter of his castle, to follow where art and her
genius beckon her. In _Diane au Bois_ the goddess "that leads the
precise life" turns her back on Eros, who has subdued even her, and
passes from the scene as she waves her hand in sign of a farewell
ineffably mournful. Nearer tragedy than this M. De Banville does not
care to go; and if there is any deeper tragedy in scenes of blood and in
stages strewn with corpses, from that he abstains. His _Florise_ is
perhaps too long, perhaps too learned; and certainly we are asked to
believe too much when a kind of etherealised Consuelo is set before us as
the _prima donna_ of old Hardy's troupe:

"Mais Florise n'est pas une femme. Je suis
L'harmonieuse voix que berce vos ennuis;
Je suis la lyre aux sons divers que le poete
Fait resonner et qui sans lui serait muette--
Une comedienne enfin. Je ne suis pas
Une femme."

An actress who was not a woman had little to do in the company of
Scarron's Angelique and Mademoiselle de l'Estoile. Florise, in short, is
somewhat too allegorical and haughty a creature; while Colombine and
Nerine (Vaudeville, June 1864) are rather tricksy imps than women of
flesh and blood. M. De Banville's stage, on the whole, is one of glitter
and fantasy; yet he is too much a Greek for the age that appreciates "la
belle Helene," too much a lyric dramatist to please the contemporaries of
Sardou; he lends too much sentiment and dainty refinement to characters
as flimsy as those of Offenbach's drama.

Like other French poets, M. De Banville has occasionally deigned to write
_feuilletons_ and criticisms. Not many of these scattered leaves are
collected, but one volume, "La Mer de Nice" (Poulet-Mal