e flagon of gold,
madame." When, preceded by a tremolo, he made his entry in the scene,
the third gallery trembled, and a sigh of relief greeted the moment when
the first walking gentleman at last said to him: "Between us two, now,"
and immolated him for the grand triumph of virtue.

[Footnote A: A nickname given to the Boulevard du Temple, on account of
the numerous melodramatic theatres situated there.]

[Illustration]

But this sort of success, which is only betrayed by murmurs of horror,
is not of the kind to make a dramatic career seductive; and besides the
old actor had always hidden in a corner of his heart the bucolic ideal
which is in the heart of almost all artists. He sighed for an old age of
leisure, and the comfortable dignity of a retired shopkeeper; the house
in the country, where he could live with his family, with melons, under
an arbor; cakes and wine in the winter evenings; his daughter a scholar
in a convent; his son in the uniform of the Polytechnique; and the cross
of the Legion.

Now, when we had occasion to know him, he had already nearly realized
his dreams.

After the failure of the theatre where he had been for a long time
engaged, some capitalists had thought of him to put the enterprise on
its feet again. With his systematic habits, his good sense, his thorough
and practical knowledge of the business, and a sufficiently correct
literary instinct, he became an excellent manager. He was the owner of
stocks and a villa at Montmorency; his son was a student at
Sainte-Barbe, and his daughter had just come out of Les Oiseaux; and if
the malice of small newspapers had retarded his nomination in the Legion
of Honor by recalling every year, about the first of January, his old
ranting on the stage, when he played formerly the villains' parts, he
could yet hope that it would not be long before the red ribbon would
flourish in his button-hole. He had still preserved some of the habits
of a strolling player, such as being very familiar with everybody, and
dyeing his mustaches; but as he was, on the whole, good, honest, and
serviceable, he conquered the esteem and friendship of those with whom
he came in contact.

So it was with sincere grief that the whole dramatic world learned one
day the terrible sorrow which had smitten that excellent man. His
daughter, a girl of seventeen, had died suddenly of brain-fever.

We knew how he adored the child; how he had brought her up in the
strictest principl