XVIII would imitate Augustus. Vain hope!

I have seen _Phedre_; the part of Phedre by that admirable actress Mlle
Duchesnois, who performs the part so naturally and with so much passion
that we entirely forget the extreme plainness of the person. She acts with
far more feeling and pathos than Mlle Georges. I shall never be able to
forget Mlle Duchesnois in _Phedre_. She gave me a full idea of the
impassioned Queen, nor were it possible to depict with greater fidelity the
"Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee," as in that beautiful speech of
Phedre to Oenone wherein she reveals her passion for Hippolyte and
pourtrays the terrible struggle between duty and female delicacy on the one
hand, and on the other a flame that could not be overcome, convinced as it
were of the complete inutility of further efforts of resistance and
invoking death as her only refuge. I was moved even to tears. I am so great
an admirer of the whole of this speech beginning "Mon mal vient de plus
lorn" etc., and ending "Un reste de chaleur tout pret a s'exhaler," that I
think in it Racine has not only united the excellencies of Euripides,
Sappho and Theocritus in describing the passion of love, but has far
surpassed them all; that speech is certainly the masterpiece of French
versification and scarcely inferior to it is that beautiful and ingenuous
confession of love by Hippolyte to Aricie. What an admirable _pendant_ to
the love of Phedre! In Hippolyte you behold the innocence, simplicity and
ingenuousness of a first and pure attachment: in Phedre the _embrasement_,
the ungovernable delirium of a criminal passion.

I have seen Mlle Duchesnois again in the _Merope_ of Voltaire and admire
her more and more. This is an admirable play. The dialogue is so spirited;
the agitation of maternal tenderness, and the occasional bursts of feelings
impossible to be restrained, render this play one of the most interesting
perhaps on the French stage, and Mlle Duchesnois gave with the happiest
effect her part in those two scenes; the first wherein she supposes Egisthe
to be the person who has killed her son; in the other where having
discovered the reality of his person, she is obliged to dissemble the
discovery, but on Egisthe being about to be sacrificed she exclaims
"Barbare, c'est mon fils!" The part of Egisthe was given by a young actor
who made his appearance at this theatre for the first tune, and he executed
his part with complete success (Firmin, I think