m grasp of the
dramatist. The characters speak for themselves; each reveals himself
with the swift directness of the personages of a play. They are not
talked about and about, for all analysis has been done by the playwright
before he rings up the curtain in the first paragraph. And the story
unrolls itself, also, as rapidly as does a comedy. The movement is
straightforward. There is the cleverness and the ingenuity of the
accomplished dramatist, but the construction has the simplicity of the
highest skill. The arrangement of incidents is so artistic that it seems
inevitable; and no one is ever moved to wonder whether or not the tale
might have been better told in different fashion.

Nephew of the composer of "La Juive"--an opera not now heard as often as
it deserves, perhaps--and son of a playwright no one of whose
productions now survives, M. Halevy grew up in the theatre. At fourteen
he was on the free-list of the Opera, the Opera-Comique, and the Odeon.
After he left school and went into the civil service his one wish was to
write plays, and so to be able to afford to resign his post. In the
civil service he had an inside view of French politics, which gave him a
distaste for the mere game of government without in any way impairing
the vigor of his patriotism; as is proved by certain of the short stones
dealing with the war of 1870 and the revolt of the Paris Communists. And
while he did his work faithfully, he had spare hours to give to
literature. He wrote plays and stories, and they were rejected. The
manager of the Odeon declared that one early play of M. Halevy's was
exactly suited to the Gymnase, and the manager of the Gymnase protested
that it was exactly suited to the Odeon. The editor of a daily journal
said that one early tale of M. Halevy's was too brief for a novel, and
the editor of a weekly paper said that it was too long for a short
story.

In time, of course, his luck turned; he had plays performed and stories
published; and at last he met M. Henri Meilhac, and entered on that
collaboration of nearly twenty years' duration to which we owe
"Froufrou" and "Tricoche et Cacolet," on the one hand, and on the other
the books of Offenbach's most brilliant operas--"Barbebleue," for
example, and "La Perichole." When this collaboration terminated, shortly
before M. Halevy wrote _The Abbe Constantin_, he gave up writing for the
stage. The training of the playwright he could not give up, if he
would, nor the i