S OF "FROUFROU."

No doubt it will surprise some theatre-goers who are not special
students of the stage to be told that the authors of _Froufrou_ are the
authors also of the _Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein_ and of _La Belle
Helene_, of _Carmen_ and of _Le Petit Duc_. There are a few, I know, who
think that _Froufrou_ was written by the fertile and ingenious M.
Victorien Sardou, and who, without thinking, credit M. Jacques Offenbach
with the composition of the words as well as the music of the _Grande
Duchesse_; and as for _Carmen_, is it not an _Italian_ opera, and is not
the book, like the music, the work of some Italian? As a matter of fact,
all these plays, unlike as they are to each other, and not only these,
but many more--not a few of them fairly well known to the American
play-goer--are due to the collaboration of M. Henri Meilhac and M.
Ludovic Halevy.

Born in 1832, M. Henri Meilhac, like M. Emile Zola, dealt in books
before he began to make them. He soon gave up trade for journalism, and
contributed with pen and pencil to the comic _Journal pour Rire_. He
began as a dramatist in 1855 with a two-act play at the Palais Royal
Theatre: like the first pieces of Scribe and of M. Sardou, and of so
many more who have afterward abundantly succeeded on the stage, this
play of M. Meilhac's was a failure; and so also was his next, likewise
in two acts. But in 1856 the _Sarabande du Cardinal_, a delightful
little comedy in one act, met with favor at the Gymnase. It was followed
by two or three other comediettas equally clever. In 1859, M. Meilhac
made his first attempt at a comedy in five acts, but the _Petit fils de
Mascarille_ had not the good fortune of his ancestor. In 1860, for the
first time, he was assisted by M. Ludovic Halevy, and in the twenty
years since then their names have been linked together on the
title-pages of two score or more plays of all kinds--drama, comedy,
farce, opera, operetta and ballet. M. Meilhac's new partner was the
nephew of the Halevy who is best known out of France as the composer of
the _Jewess_, and he was the son of M. Leon Halevy, poet, philosopher
and playwright. Two years younger than M. Henri Meilhac, M. Ludovic
Halevy held a place in the French civil service until 1858, when he
resigned to devote his whole time, instead of his spare time, to the
theatre. As the son of a dramatist and the nephew of a popular composer,
he had easy access to the stage. He began as the librettist-i