above passage from Dickens was
referred to, but he had never heard of it: he said, however, that
Monsieur Dickens had once sent him some novels to read, and by his tone
did not imply that he was at all flattered by the admiration of the
Englishman. For in truth Lemaitre was already a spoiled child of
adulation years before Charles Dickens became famous; and now that
Dickens was nearly four years dead, the old actor still lived, and
remembered that every admiring adjective known to the French language
had been showered upon himself: what mattered a few more in the English
language? Looking in the tired, watery old eyes of the man sitting
before me with his hands thrust deep in his pockets--and what
magnificent, fiery, great black billiard-balls of eyes they must have
been in his youth!--looking at the skinny folds which years had gathered
about his aged jaws, it was still, strange to say, perfectly easy to
realize the fascinating man Lemaitre had been in his prime, the
tremendous power for swaying the emotions of his auditors which once
abode in that rugged frame.

Frederic Lemaitre was born at Havre on the 21st of July, 1798, and had
been on the stage thirty years at the time when Dickens saw him at the
Ambigu. As he was at that time already nearly sixty years old, it is
easy to believe what some have asserted, that his powers were beginning
to wane. Seeing him, therefore, in the year 1874, at the age of
seventy-six, still an actor of such fascination that I hardly know his
equal in Paris, and reading Dickens's account of his acting at the age
of fifty-eight, the most cautious critic may accept without modification
the extravagant stories told of the power he had over his audience when
he was still young. Similar stories are related of Edmund Kean, and the
resemblance in the private characters of the two men is most striking.

Lemaitre's father was an architect. There is nothing to show that the
boy displayed extraordinary mimetic genius. He was already about twenty
years old when his father, yielding to his wishes, and perceiving in him
a certain taste for declamation, brought him to Paris that he might be
educated for the stage. He was admitted to the Conservatoire[A] and
began his studies. He was not a very brilliant student, though he was
assiduous in his devotion to study. During his pupilage he secured his
first engagement as an actor at a little theatre on the Boulevard du
Crime, called the Varietes Amusantes--