the actors of the Comedie Francais he is the most universally
appreciated and admired; he is the popular favorite. And he has
certainly earned this distinction, for there was never a more amiable
and sympathetic genius. He plays the young lovers of the past and the
present, and he acquits himself of his difficult and delicate task with
extraordinary grace and propriety. The danger I spoke of a while
since--the danger, for the actor of a romantic and sentimental part, of
being compromised by the coat and trousers, the hat and umbrella of the
current year--are reduced by Delaunay to their minimum. He reconciles
in a marvellous fashion the love-sick gallant of the ideal world with
the "gentlemanly man" of to-day; and his passion is as far removed from
rant as his propriety is from stiffness. He has been accused of late
years of falling into a mannerism, and I think there is some truth in
the charge. But the fault in Delaunay's situation is certainly venial.
How can a man of fifty, to whom, as regards face and figure, Nature has
been stingy, play an amorous swain of twenty without taking refuge in a
mannerism? His mannerism is a legitimate device for diverting the
spectator's attention from certain incongruities. Delaunay's
juvenility, his ardor, his passion, his good taste and sense of
fitness, have always an irresistible charm. As he has grown older he
has increased his repertory by parts of greater weight and sobriety--he
has played the husbands as well as the lovers. One of his most recent
and brilliant "creations" of this kind is his Marquis de Presles in "Le
Gendre de M. Poirier"--a piece of acting superb for its lightness and
_desinvolture_. It cannot be better praised than by saying it was
worthy of Got's inimitable rendering of the part opposed to it. But I
think I shall remember Delaunay best in the picturesque and romantic
comedies--as the Duc de Richelieu in "Mlle. De Belle-Isle"; as the
joyous, gallant, exuberant young hero, his plumes and love knots
fluttering in the breath of his gushing improvisation, of Corneille's
"Menteur"; or, most of all, as the melodious swains of those charmingly
poetic, faintly, naturally Shakespearian little comedies of Alfred de
Musset.

To speak of Delaunay ought to bring us properly to Mlle. Favart, who
for so many years invariably represented the object of his tender
invocations. Mlle. Favart at the present time rather lacks what the
French call "actuality." She has made this wi