fter his wont, going
to utter some quaint, out-of-the-way opinion.

"Am I," asked he, "really a strange being who often thinks things which
other people are not very apt to think? Well, be that as it may; I say
again that when a fairly good writer, who has genuine talent, such as
our Sylvester, puts a piece upon the stage, it feels to me very much as
if he made up his mind to jump out of a third-floor window, and take
his chance of what might happen to him. I am going to make a
confession; when I told you I did not go to the theatre on the first
night of Sylvester's piece, I told you a lie. Of course I went; and sat
on a back seat, a second Sylvester, a second author of the piece, for
it is impossible that he can have felt the strain of anxiety, the
strange feeling compounded of pleasure and its opposite, the
restlessness amounting to real pain, in any greater degree than I did
myself. Every word of the players, every gesture of theirs, took my
breath away, and I kept saying to myself, 'Oh, gracious heavens, is it
possible that that will do, that it will go down with the audience? and
is the author responsible whether it does or not?'"

"You make the thing worse than it is," said Sylvester. "I feel a
disagreeable oppression of the breath, particularly at the beginning;
but if matters are going on pretty well, and the public expresses
itself favourably, this gradually goes off, and makes room for a very
pleasant sensation, in which I think selfish satisfaction with one's
own production occupies the principal place."

"Oh! you theatre-writers," cried out Vincent, "you are the most
conceited of all. The applause of the multitude is, to you, the very
honey of Hybla, and you sip and swallow it with the daintiest of faces
and the sweetest of smiles. But I am going to take up the role of
devil's advocate, and add that you are as little to be found fault
with, for your anxiousness and eagerness (which many folks think are
nothing but the pangs of your vanity), as anybody else who is playing a
great and risky game. You are staking yourselves; winning means
applause, but losing means not only deserved blame, but (if this
amounts to a distinct public expression of it) that besmirching of the
ludicrous which is the bitterest and (as the French think) the most
fearful and damnable condemnation which a man can' experience here
below. A virtuous Frenchman would, therefore, much rather be considered
a vile reprobate than be laughed