some actor, a troublesome guest, a troublesome person
altogether. The play was given in that great yellow saloon,
opening off from the grand staircase, where Moliere first gave _Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and where Lulli jumped from the stage into
the orchestra to amuse Louis le Grand when he was bored with
_Pourceaugnac_. Monsieur Voltaire was, I am sure, much harder to
please than Louis le Grand, and Madame du Chatelet was harder to
please than Monsieur Voltaire. The performance began at seven
o'clock. The king paid the strictest attention to it, and even
Madame du Chatelet, who was furiously jealous of every woman on whom
Monsieur Voltaire cast his eye, was obliged to behave reasonably.
Monsieur Voltaire was stage manager only in this play. The entire
cast was good, but not one of the ladies and gentlemen could stand
any comparison with Francezka. She was born to be in the very front
rank of actresses; she could have stepped from the theater of the
castle of Chambord on to the stage of the House of Moliere and have
won renown. She swayed the audience, an audience composed wholly of
fine people, whose hearts are hard to reach, and whose souls are
infinitesimal; she swayed them, I say, as if they had all been
shopkeepers, and lackeys, and ladies' maids. As for the pages of
honor, the little rogues did nothing but scream with laughter at
the comedy parts and blubber vociferously at the moving parts.

The applause at the end of each act was deafening, the king leading
off. When the play was over there was frantic hand-clapping, and
shouts of "Brava!" succeeded by a general quiet, for the piece was yet
to come in which Francezka, Count Maurice of Saxe, and Francois Marie
Voltaire were to be the sole actors and Monsieur Voltaire sole
author.

The whole world knows _The Tattler_, but only those who saw it done
at the castle of Chambord on that December night can have any idea of
the wit of the lines, the glow of the sentiment, the pure beauty of
the acting. Monsieur Voltaire was great as an actor in his own
immortal creations. Nobody except that impudent dog of a Jacques Haret
ever dreamed of classing Monsieur Voltaire with any but the great of
the earth, and Jacques Haret did it out of sheer impudence. I had no
love for Monsieur Voltaire, but I can not deny his greatness.

The acting of Count Saxe was like everything else he did, superb. As
for Francezka, I ever thought, as was said of the English poet
Shakespeare, tha