ted_ piece, in which everything was puerile, artificial, and
conventional, from the first word to the last line. It was an _olla
podrida_, in which Shakspeare hobnobbed with Campistron, Theophile
Gautier locked arms with Dorat, Plutarch was dovetailed with the
Mantua-Makers' Journal of Fashions. Cleopatra spouted long speeches upon
archaeology, hieroglyphics, the sun, climate, and virtue; Antony was
guilty of _concetti_ in the style of Seneca; Octavia prattled like a
respectable Parisian lady, who takes care of her children when they have
the measles, and hides from them their father's bad habits. It was
neither antique nor Roman, nor classic nor romantic, nor good nor bad
nor indifferent; it was a tragical wager won by a smart woman at the
expense of her audience. The latter, nevertheless, bravely did their
duty. Neither "Le Cid," nor "Polyeucte," nor "Andromaque," nor
"Athalie"--Corneille and Racine's masterpieces--ever produced such
rapturous enthusiasm. Monsieur Mery dashed off extemporaneously, in
Marseillais accent, admiring paradoxes which lacked nothing but splendid
rhyme. Monsieur Theophile Gautier, who looked like an obese Turk habited
in European clothes, laid aside his Moslem placidity to cry that the
tragedy was marvellous. Monsieur Alfred de Musset, lolling in his
arm-chair in an attitude which seemed a compromise between sleep and
_Kief_, smiled beatifically. Monsieur Victor Hugo vowed that nothing
half so fine had ever before been written in any age or in any country
or in any language--except (_aside_) "my own 'Burgraves'"! Monsieur de
Lamartine, like a god descended upon earth and astounded to find himself
at home, let fall from his divine lips compliments perfumed with
ambrosia, sparkling with poetry, and glittering with indifference.
Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, that little bit of a fellow, the fly of the
political and literary coach, went first to one and then to another, his
eye-glass incrusted in his eyebrow, stiffening his wee form as long as
he could make it, rattling his high-heeled boots as loudly as he could
contrive, stretching out his round, dogmatic face, puffing and blowing
to give himself importance, dying to be the Coryphaeus of the company,
and mortified to see himself reduced to sing his enthusiasm in the
chorus; he frisked about the room, and seemed to be handing around his
rapture on a waiter, as domestics hand around cake and ices at parties.

The tragedy fatigued me. This comedy of ad