his health, "I was a great student of the
theatre in my youth; the stage and its scenic effects continue to have
for me peculiar attractions; and the white hairs which crown my
brow to-day seem to me no obstacle to my allowing your interesting
publication to profit by the fruit of my studies and my experience. As
member of the reading-committee of the Odeon theatre, I am conversant
with the modern drama, and--if I may be quite sure of your discretion--I
will even confide to you that among my papers it would not be impossible
for me to find a certain tragedy entitled 'Sapor,' which in my young
days won me some fame when read in salons."

"Ah!" said la Peyrade, endeavoring to gild the refusal he should be
forced to give, "why not try to have it put upon the stage? We might be
able to help you in that direction."

"Certainly," said Thuillier, "the director of any theatre to whom we
should recommend--"

"No," replied Phellion. "In the first place, as member of the
reading-committee of the Odeon, having to sit in judgment upon others,
it would not become me to descend into the arena myself. I am an old
athlete, whose business it is to judge of blows he can no longer give.
In this sense, criticism is altogether within my sphere, and all the
more because I have certain views on the proper method of composing
dramatic feuilletons which I think novel. The 'castigat ridendo mores'
ought to be, according to my humble lights, the great law, I may say the
only law of the stage. I should therefore show myself pitiless for those
works, bred of imagination, in which morality has no part, and to which
mothers of families--"

"Excuse me," said la Peyrade, "for interrupting you; but before allowing
you to take the trouble to develop your poetical ideas, I ought to tell
you that we have already made arrangements for our dramatic criticism."

"Ah! that's another thing," said Phellion; "an honest man must keep his
word."

"Yes," said Thuillier, "we have our dramatic critic, little thinking
that you would offer us your valuable assistance."

"Well," said Phellion, suddenly becoming crafty,--for there is something
in the newspaper atmosphere, impossible to say what, which flies to
the head, the bourgeois head especially,--"since you are good enough to
consider my pen capable of doing you some service, perhaps a series of
detached thoughts on different subjects, to which I should venture to
give the name of 'Diversities,' might be of a