something fine of it."

"No doubt, no doubt," said the stranger.

"Do tell us," Mrs. Baldwin was heard to ask M. Faubourg across the
table, "what the young generation are doing in France? Who are the young
novelists?"

"There are no young novelists worth mentioning," answered M. Faubourg.

Miss Tring broke in and said she considered "Le Visage Emerveille," by
the Comtesse de Noailles, to be the most beautiful book of the century,
with the exception, perhaps, of the "Tagebuch einer Verlorenen."

But from the end of the table Blenheim's utterance was heard
preponderating over that of his neighbours. He was making a fine
speech on the modern stage, comparing an actor-manager to Napoleon, and
commenting on the campaigns of the latter in detail.

Quite heedless of this Mr. Willmott was carrying on an equally
impassioned but much slower monologue on his conception of the character
of Cyrano de Bergerac, which he said he intended to produce. "Cyrano,"
he said, "has been maligned by Coquelin. Coquelin is a great artist,
but he did not understand Cyrano. Cyrano is a dreamer, a poet; he is a
martyr of thought like Tolstoi, a sacrifice to wasted, useless action,
like Hamlet; he is a Moliere come too soon, a Bayard come too late, a
John the Baptist of the stage, calling out in vain in the wilderness--of
bricks and mortar; he is misunderstood;--an enigma, an anachronism, a
premature herald, a false dawn."