Scribe are often Parisian articles of marvellous manufacture.

Very cordially yours,

Émile Zola.

* * * * *




NOTES


ABRAHAM DREYFUS (1847-) was the author of half a dozen ingenious little
plays, mostly confined to a single act. One of them, 'Un Crane sans un
Tempête,' adapted into English as the 'Silent System,' was acted in New
York by Coquelin and Agnes Booth. Dreyfus was also the author of two
volumes of lively sketches lightly satirizing different aspects of the
French stage,--'Scènes de la vie de théâtre' (1880) and 'L'Incendie des
Folies-Plastiques' (1886).

In the Spring of 1884 he delivered an address on the art of playmaking
before the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire of Brussels. This lecture was
entitled 'Comment se fait une pièce de théâtre;' and it was printed
privately in an edition limited to fifty copies, (Paris: A. Quantin,
1884). In the course of this address he read letters received by him
from ten or twelve of the most distinguisht dramatists of France in
response to his request for information as to their methods of
composition. It was to these letters that the lecture owed its interest