reply that I have probably neither the wit nor the talent for that; but
if I had had them I should still have preferred our literary fraternity
and alliance. The few works I have produced alone have been to me a
labor; those I have produced with you have been a pleasure."

Eugene Scribe was born December 25, 1791, at Paris, Rue Saint-Denis,
near the Marche des Innocents. His father, whom he lost early, kept a
silk store, at the sign of the Chat Noir, where he had made a
considerable fortune. Eugene commenced his career as a dramatic writer
in 1811. From that time to his death (February 20, 1861), he composed
alone, or with associates, and had represented on the various stages of
Paris, more than four hundred plays. M. Vitel said, at the reception of
M. Octave Feuillet, at the French Academy, March 26, 1863:--

"There was in Scribe a powerful and truly superior faculty, that
assured to him and explained to me his supremacy in the theatre of his
day. It was a gift of dramatic invention that perhaps no one before him
has possessed; the gift of discovering at every step, almost apropos of
nothing, theatrical combinations of a novel and striking effect; and of
discovering them, not in the germ only, or barely sketched, but in
relief, in action, and already on the stage. In the time needed by his
confreres to prepare a plot, he would finish four, and he never secured
this prodigious fecundity at the expense of originality. It is in no
commonplace mould that his creations are cast. There is not one of his
works that has not at least its grain of novelty."

On his part, M. Octave Feuillet, a master in things theatrical, said in
his reception discourse:--

"One of the most difficult arts in the domain of literary invention, is
that of charming the imagination without unsettling it, of touching the
heart without troubling it, of amusing men without corrupting them;
this was the supreme art of Scribe."

They are very pretty, very alert, very French, these plays of the
Theatre de Madame. They have aged less than many pretentious works that
have aimed at immortality. There is hardly one of them without its
ingenious idea, something truly scenic. We often see amateurs seeking
pieces to play in the salons; let them draw from this repertory; they
will have but an embarrassment of choice among plays always amusing and
always in good form.

Scribe said, in his reception discourse at the French Academy (January
28, 1836):--

"It h