After he left school and went into the civil service his one wish was to
write plays, and so to be able to afford to resign his post. In the
civil service he had an inside view of French politics, which gave him a
distaste for the mere game of government without in any way impairing
the vigor of his patriotism; as is proved by certain of the short stones
dealing with the war of 1870 and the revolt of the Paris Communists. And
while he did his work faithfully, he had spare hours to give to
literature. He wrote plays and stories, and they were rejected. The
manager of the Odéon declared that one early play of M. Halévy's was
exactly suited to the Gymnase, and the manager of the Gymnase protested
that it was exactly suited to the Odéon. The editor of a daily journal
said that one early tale of M. Halévy's was too brief for a novel, and
the editor of a weekly paper said that it was too long for a short
story.

In time, of course, his luck turned; he had plays performed and stories
published; and at last he met M. Henri Meilhac, and entered on that
collaboration of nearly twenty years' duration to which we owe
"Froufrou" and "Tricoche et Cacolet," on the one hand, and on the other
the books of Offenbach's most brilliant operas--"Barbebleue," for
example, and "La Périchole." When this collaboration terminated, shortly
before M. Halévy wrote _The Abbé Constantin_, he gave up writing for the
stage. The training of the playwright he could not give up, if he
would, nor the intimacy with the manners and customs of the people who
live, move, and have their being on the far side of the curtain.

Obviously M. Halévy is fond of the actors and the actresses with whom he
spent the years of his manhood. They appear again and again in his
tales; and in his treatment of them there is never anything
ungentlemanly as there was in M. Jean Richepin's recent volume of