re so much that at the _jour de
l'an_ my father included a toy-theatre among my presents. It had a
real curtain of green baize, that would roll up and down, and
beautiful coloured scenery that you could shift, and footlights, and a
trap-door in the middle of the stage; and indeed it would have been
altogether perfect, except for the Company. I have since learned that
this is not infrequently the case with theatres. My company consisted
of pasteboard men and women who, as artists, struck me as eminently
unsatisfactory. They couldn't move their arms or legs, and they had
such stolid, uninteresting faces. I don't know how it first occurred
to me to turn them all off, and fill their places with my mice.
Mercedes, of course, was leading lady; Monsieur and Madame Denis were
the heavy parents; and a gentlemanlike young mouse named Leander was
_jeune premier_. Then, in my leisure, they used to act the most
tremendous plays. I was stage-manager, prompter, playwright, chorus,
and audience, placing the theatre before a looking-glass, so that,
though my duties kept me behind, I could peer round the edge, and
watch the spectacle as from the front. I would invent the lines and
deliver them, but, that my illusion might be the more complete, I
would change my voice for each personage. The lines tried hard to be
verses; no doubt they were _vers libres_. At any rate, they were
mouth-filling and sonorous. The first play we attempted, I need hardly
say, was _Le Comte de Monte Cristo_, such version of it as I could
reconstruct from memory. That had rather a long run. Then I dramatised
_Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp_, _Paul et Virginie_, _Quentin
Durward_, and _La Dame de Monsoreau_. Mercedes made a charming Diane,
Leander a brilliant and dashing Bussy; Monsieur Denis was cast for the
role of Frere Gorenflot; and a long, thin, cadaverous-looking mouse,
Don Quichotte by name, somewhat inadequately represented Chicot. We
began, as you see, with melodrama; presently we descended to light
comedy, playing _Les Memoires d'un Ane_, _Jean qui rit_, and other
works of the immortal Madame de Segur. And then at last we turned a
new leaf, and became naturalistic. We had never heard of the
naturalist school, though Monsieur Zola had already published some
volumes of the _Rougon-Macquart_; but ideas are in the air; and we,
for ourselves, discovered the possibilities of naturalism
simultaneously, as it were, with the acknowledged apostle of that form
of a