which would break off with a sigh from the clarionet, and drearily the
play would begin. We were all eyes and ears in spite of that, and
nothing in the play of the tragic actresses--Madame Duchesnois, Madame
Paradol, and Madame Bourgoin--ever escaped us. I can see and hear yet
all Corneille's plays, and Racine's too, and Zaire, and Mahomet, and
L'Orphelin de la Chine, and many more. But what we longed for most
impatiently were Moliere's plays. They were our prime favourites, and
what actors too! Monrose, Cartigny, Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, and Faure,
whose appearances as Fleurant in Le Malade and Truffaldin in L'Etourdi
we always greeted with delight, on account of the properties he carried
in his hand. This same Faure, an old soldier of 1782, never failed to
say to my father, as he escorted him to the door, taper in hand, "Ha,
Sir! this is not the camp at la Lune!" referring to a bivouac just
before the battle of Valmy. It was always a great amusement to us to go
along the passages behind the scenes, especially when the classic Roman
processions were being formed up there for the tragedies, for among the
lictors and the other Romans we recognized many of the clerks and
workmen employed about the Palais-Royal, and we used to bid them good
day, and call them by their names, and be very proud indeed of speaking
to artists, and we went home to our own fold, imitating the call in the
theatre: "On va-a commmencer! On co-mmence!"(Going to begin, just
beginning).Sometimes too we were taken to see modern plays, but that did
not happen often. Yet even now I seem to hear the actor Armand, just
before 1830, talking thick behind his Directoire cravat, in TOM JONES:--

Point d'amis, point de grace,
A la session prochaine il faudra qu'on y passe!

and the whole house rose at him! I remember also being taken to the
first night of Henri III., and being very much amused by the cups and