their limits.

'Tis only God Almighty and some rare geniuses,

for whom the career widens as they advance.

I- With this precious enthusiasm for fine things, and this facility of genius of yours, is it possible that you have invented nothing?

He- Pardon me; for instance, that admiring attitude of the back, of which I spoke to you; I regard it as my own, though envy may contest my claim. I dare say it has been employed before: but who has felt how convenient it was for laughing in one's sleeve at the ass for whom one was dying of admiration! I have more than a hundred ways of opening fire on a girl under the very eyes of her mother, without the latter suspecting a jot of it; yes, and even of making her an accomplice. I had hardly begun my career before I disdained all the vulgar fashions of slipping a billet-doux; I have ten ways of having them taken from me, and out of the number I venture to flatter myself there are some that are new. I possess in an especial degree the gift of encouraging a timid young man; I have secured success for some who had neither wit nor good looks. If all that was written down, I fancy people would concede me some genius.

I-And would do you singular honor.

He-I don't doubt it.

I-In your place, I would put those famous methods on paper. It would be a pity for them to be lost.

He-It is true; but you could never suppose how little I think of method and precepts. He who needs a protocol will never go far. Your genius reads little, experiments much, and teaches himself. Look at Cæsar, Turenne, Vauban, the Marquise de Tencin, her brother the cardinal, and the cardinal's secretary, the Abbé Trublet, and Bouret! Who is it that has given lessons to Bouret? Nobody; 'tis nature that forms these

rare men.

I-Well, but you might do this in your lost hours, when the anguish of your empty stomach, or the weariness of your stomach overloaded, banishes slumber.

He-I'll think of it. It is better to write great things than to execute small ones. Then the soul rises on wings, the imagination is kindled; whereas it shrivels in amazement at the applause which the absurd public lavishes so perversely on that mincing creature of a Dangeville, who plays so flatly, who walks the stage nearly bent double, who stares affectedly and

incessantly into the eyes of every one she talks to, and who takes her grimaces for finesse, and her little strut for grace; or on that emphatic Clairon, who becomes more studied, more pretentious, more elaborately heavy, than I can tell you. That imbecile of a pit claps hands to the echo, and never sees that we are a mere worsted ball of daintinesses ('Tis true the ball grows a trifle big, but what does it matter?), that we have the finest skin, the finest eyes, the prettiest bill; little feeling inside, in truth; a step that is not exactly light, but which for all that is not as awkward as they say. As for sentiment, on the other hand, there is not one of these stage dames whom we cannot cap.

I- What do you mean by all that? Is it irony or truth?

He- The worst of it is that this deuced sentiment is all internal, and not a glimpse of it appears outside; but I who am now talking to you, I know, and know well, that she has it. If it is not that, you should see, if a fit of ill humor comes on, how we treat the valets, how the waiting maids are cuffed and trounced, what kicks await our good friend, if he fails in an atom of that respect which is our due. 'Tis a little demon, I tell you, full of sentiment and dignity. Ah, you don't quite know where you are, eh?

I-I confess I can hardly make out whether you are speaking in good faith or in malice. I am a plain man. Be kind enough to be a little more outspoken, and to leave your art behind for once.

He-What is it? why it is what we retail before our little patroness about the Dangeville or the Clairon, mixed up here and there with a word or two to put you on the scent. I will allow you to take me for a good for nothing, but not for a fool; and 'tis only a fool, or a man eaten up with conceit, who could say such a parcel of impertinences seriously.

I-But how do people ever bring themselves to say them? He-It is not done all at once, but little by little you come to it. Ingenii largitor venter.

I-Then hunger must press you very hard.

He-That may be; yet strong as you may think them, be sure that those to whom they are addressed are much more accustomed to listen to them than we are to hazard them.

I-Is there anybody who has courage to be of your opinion? He-What do you mean by anybody? It is the sentiment and language of the whole of society.

1- Those of you who are not great rascals must be great fools.

He-Fools! I assure you there is only one, and that is he who feasts us to cheat him.

I-But how can people allow themselves to be cheated in such gross fashion? For surely the superiority of the Dangeville and the Clairon is a settled thing.

He-We swallow until we are full to the throat any lie that flatters us, and take drop by drop a truth that is bitter to And then we have the air of being so profoundly penetrated, so true.

us.

I-Yet you must once, at any rate, have sinned against the principles of art, and let slip, by an oversight, some of those bitter truths that wound; for, in spite of the wretched, abject, vile, abominable part you play, I believe you have at bottom some delicacy of soul.

He-I! not the least in the world. Deuce take me if I know what I am! In a general way, I have a mind as round as a ball, and a character fresh as a water willow. Never false, little interest as I have in being true; never true, little interest as I have in being false. I say things just as they come into my head; sensible things, then so much the better; impertinent things, then people take no notice. I let my natural frankness have full play. I never in all my life gave a thought, either beforehand, what to say, or while I was saying it, or after I had said it. And so I offend nobody.

I-Still that did happen with the worthy people among whom you used to live, and who were so kind to you. You will not find as good a house every day; but they, for one madman who falls short, will find a hundred to take his place.

He- A hundred madmen like me, sir philosopher; they are not so common, I can tell you! Flat fools-yes. People are harder to please in folly than in talent or virtue. I am a rarity in my own kind, a great rarity. Now that they have me no longer, what are they doing? They find time as heavy as if they were dogs. I am an inexhaustible bagful of impertinences. Every minute I had some fantastic notion that made them laugh till they cried; I was a whole Bedlam in myself.

I-Well, at any rate you had bed and board, coat and breeches, shoes, and a pistole a month.

He-That is the profit side of the account; you say not a word of the cost of it all. First, if there was a whisper of a new piece (no matter how bad the weather), one had to ransack

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all the garrets in Paris, until one had found the author; then to get a reading of the play, and adroitly to insinuate that there was a part in it which would be rendered in a superior manner by a certain person of my acquaintance. — “And by whom, if you please?"-"By whom? a pretty question! There are graces, finesse, elegance."-"Ah, you mean Mademoiselle Dangeville? Perhaps you know her?" "Yes, a little; but 'tis not she."-"Who is it, then?"-I whispered the name very low. "She?"-"Yes, she," I repeated with some shame, for sometimes I do feel a touch of shame; and at this name you should have seen how long the poet's face grew, if indeed he did not burst out laughing in my face. Still, whether he would or not, I was bound to take my man to dine; and he, being naturally afraid of pledging himself, drew back, and tried to say "No, thank you." You should have seen how I was treated, if I did not succeed in my negotiation! I was a blockhead, a fool, a rascal; I was not good for a single thing; I was not worth the glass of water which they gave me to drink. It was still worse at their performance, when I had to go intrepidly amid the cries of a public that has a good judgment of its own, whatever may be said about it, and make my solitary clap of the hand audible, draw every eye to me, and sometimes save the actress from hisses, and hear people murmur around me "He is one of the valets in disguise belonging to the man who . . . Will that knave be quiet?" They do not know what brings a man to that; they think it is stupidity, but there is one motive that excuses anything.

I-Even the infraction of the civil laws.

He-At length, however, I became known, and people used to say: "Oh, it is Rameau!" My resource was to throw out some words of irony to save my solitary applause from ridicule, by making them interpret it in an opposite sense.

Now agree that one must have a mighty interest to make one thus brave the assembled public, and that each of these pieces of hard labor was worth more than a paltry crown. And then at home there was a pack of dogs to tend, and cats for which I was responsible. I was only too happy if Micou favored me with a stroke of his claw that tore my cuff or my wrist. Criquette is liable to colic; 'tis I who have to rub her. In old days mademoiselle used to have the vapors; to-day, it is her She is beginning to grow a little stout; you should hear the fine tales they make out of this.

nerves.

I-You do not belong to people of this sort, at any rate?

He-Why not?

I-Because it is indecent to throw ridicule on one's bene

factors.

He-But is it not worse still to take advantage of one's benefits to degrade the receiver of them?

I-But if the receiver of them were not vile in himself, nothing would give the benefactor the chance.

He-But if the personages were not ridiculous in themselves they would not make subjects for good tales. And then, is it my fault if they mix with rascaldom? Is it my fault if, after mixing themselves up with rascaldom, they are betrayed and made fools of? When people resolve to live with people like us, if they have common sense, there is an infinite quantity of blackness for which they must make up their minds. When they take us, do they not know us for what we are, for the most interested, vile, and perfidious of souls? Then if they know us, all is well. There is a tacit compact that they shall treat us well, and that sooner or later we shall treat them ill in return for the good that they have done us. Does not such an agreement subsist between a man and his monkey or his parrot?... If you take a young provincial to the menagerie at Versailles, and he takes it into his head for a freak to push his hands between the bars of the cage of the tiger or the panther, whose fault is it? It is all written in the silent compact, and so much the worse for the man who forgets or ignores it. How I could justify by this universal and sacred compact the people whom you accuse of wickedness, whereas it is in truth yourselves whom you ought to accuse of folly. . . . But while we excute the just decrees of Providence on folly, you who paint us as we are, you execute its just decrees on us. What would you think of us, if we claimed, with our shameless manners, to enjoy public consideration? That we are out of our senses. And those who look for decent behavior from people who are born vicious and with vile and bad characters are they in their senses? Everything has its true wages in this world. There are two Public Prosecutors, one at your door, chastising offenses against society; nature is the other. Nature knows all the vices that escape the laws. Give yourself up to debauchery, and you will end with dropsy; if you are crapulous, your lungs will find you out; if you open your door to ragamuffins, and live in their company, you will be betrayed, laughed at, despised. The shortest way is to resign one's self to the