he wall, as is sometimes the usage.

Mention was made of Bulwer's _Richelieu_ by one of the guests as a
part peculiarly fitted to the powers of the great tragedian, and he
was asked if he knew the play.

"No," answered Rossi, "and I should scarcely care to add it to
my repertoire, which is already rather an extensive one. I have
personated in my time over four hundred characters, including all the
prominent personages of Alfieri, Moliere and Goldoni."

"Then you play comedy as well as tragedy? Have you ever appeared as
Shakespeare's Benedick?"

"Never, but I may perhaps study the character for my approaching tour
in the United States. My other Shakespearian characters, besides those
in which I have already appeared in Paris, are Coriolanus, Shylock,
and Timon of Athens. Once I began to study Richard III., but chancing
to see Bogumil Dawison in that character, I was so delighted with
his personation that I gave up all thoughts of performing the part
myself."

At this juncture our host attempted to fill Rossi's glass with some
peculiarly choice wine, but the tragedian stopped him with a smile. "I
am very temperate in my habits," he said, "and drink nothing but light
claret. I am not one of those that think that an actor can never play
with proper fire unless he is half drunk, like Kean in _Desordre et
Genie_. I may have very little genius--"

But here a universal outcry interrupted the speaker. That proposition
was evidently wholly untenable, in that company at least.

"Well, then," added Rossi laughing, "whatever genius I may possess, I
do not believe in disorder."

This little incident turned the conversation on the modern French
drama, whereof Rossi spoke rather slightingly, stigmatizing it as
mechanical, being composed of plays written to be performed and not
to live. "In Victor Hugo's dramas," he remarked, "there are some fine
lines and noble passages, but the characters are always Victor Hugo
in a mask: they are never real personages. It is always the author
who speaks--never a new individuality. As to the classic dramatists of
France, they are intolerable. Corneille is perhaps a shade better than
Racine, but both are stiff, pompous and unnatural: their characters
are a set of wooden puppets that are pulled by wires and work in a
certain fixed manner, from which they never deviate.

"It was Voltaire that taught the French to despise Shakespeare. He
called him a barbarian, and the French believe that sayin