face it presents to the world, is an austere
and venerable establishment, and a frivolous tone about its affairs
would be almost as much out of keeping as if applied to the Academie
herself. M. Sarcey touches upon the organization of the theatre, and
gives some account of the different phases through which it has passed
during these latter years. Its chief functionary is a general
administrator, or director, appointed by the State, which enjoys this
right in virtue of the considerable subsidy which it pays to the house;
a subsidy amounting, if I am not mistaken (M. Sarcey does not mention
the sum), to 250,000 francs. The director, however, is not an absolute,
but a constitutional ruler; for he shares his powers with the society
itself, which has always had a large deliberative voice.

Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive its light and its
inspiration? From the past, from precedent, from tradition--from the
great unwritten body of laws which no one has in his keeping, but many
in their memory, and all in their respect. The principles on which the
Theatre Francais rests are a good deal like the common law of
England--a vaguely and inconveniently registered mass of regulations
which time and occasion have welded together, and from which the
recurring occasion can usually manage to extract the rightful
precedent. Napoleon I., who had a finger in every pie in his dominion,
found time during his brief and disastrous occupation of Moscow to send
down a decree remodelling and regulating the constitution of the
theatre. This document has long been a dead letter, and the society
abides by its older traditions. The _traditions_ of the Comedie
Francaise--that is the sovereign word, and that is the charm of the
place--the charm that one never ceases to feel, however often one may
sit beneath the classic, dusky dome. One feels this charm with peculiar
intensity as a newly arrived foreigner. The Theatre Francais has had
the good fortune to be able to allow its traditions to accumulate. They
have been preserved, transmitted, respected, cherished, until at last
they form the very atmosphere, the vital air, of the establishment. A
stranger feels their superior influence the first time he sees the
great curtain go up; he feels that he is in a theatre which is not as
other theatres are. It is not only better, it is different. It has a
peculiar perfection--something consecrated, historical, academic. This
impression is deliciou