gentlewoman she appears, but a poor
strolling actress who has had a lover at every stage of her journey.
The scene was played by Bressant and Regnier, and it has always
remained in my mind as one of the most perfect things I have seen on
the stage. The gradual action of the wine upon Don Annibal, the
delicacy with which his deepening tipsiness was indicated, its
intellectual rather than physical manifestation, and, in the midst of
it, the fantastic conceit which made him think that he was winding his
fellow drinker round his fingers--all this was exquisitely rendered.
Drunkenness on the stage is usually both dreary and disgusting; and I
can remember besides this but two really interesting pictures of
intoxication (excepting always, indeed, the immortal tipsiness of
Cassio in "Othello," which a clever actor can always make touching).
One is the beautiful befuddlement of Rip Van Winkle, as Mr. Joseph
Jefferson renders it, and the other (a memory of the Theatre Francais)
the scene in the "Duc Job," in which Got succumbs to mild inebriation,
and dozes in his chair just boosily enough for the young girl who loves
him to make it out.

It is to this admirable Emile Got that M. Sarcey's second notice is
devoted. Got is at the present hour unquestionably the first actor at
the Theatre Francais, and I have personally no hesitation in accepting
him as the first of living actors. His younger comrade, Coquelin, has,
I think, as much talent and as much art; but the older man Got has the
longer and fuller record, and may therefore be spoken of as the master
_par excellence_. If I were obliged to rank the half dozen _premiers
sujets_ of the last few years at the Theatre Francais in their absolute
order of _talent_ (thank Heaven, I am not so obliged!), I think I
should make up some such little list as this: Got, Coquelin, Mme.
Plessy, Sarah Bernhardt, Mlle. Favart, Delaunay. I confess that I have
no sooner written it than I feel as if I ought to amend it, and wonder
whether it is not a great folly to put Delaunay after Mlle. Favart. But
this is idle.

As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. I have often wondered
whether the best definition of him would not be to say that he is
really a _philosophic_ actor. He is an immense humorist, and his
comicality is sometimes colossal; but his most striking quality is the
one on which M. Sarcey dwells--his sobriety and profundity, his
underlying element of manliness and melancholy, the