poleon of the
Drama." Prime Ministers courted him in the grill-room of the London
Savoy. The Paris _Figaro_ announced the coming of "the celebrated
impresario." I heard him call my name in the crowd at the Gare du Nord
and we bundled into a cab.

"So you're a great man now," I said.

"Am I?" he remarked. "There's one thing you can bet on. If they put me
on a throne to-day they are liable to yank me off to-morrow."

"And how's your own play getting along?"

"Don't!" he winced. "Let us go to the Snail."

In the cozy recesses of the Escargot d'Or, near the Central Markets, he
unraveled the mysteries of the "star system" which had made him famous.

"It's the opposite of all we ever believed," he said, while the mussels
and shell-fish were being heaped up before him. "Good-by to Caillavet
and his rules. Good-by, Terror and Pity. Good-by, dear French farce.
Give me a pretty girl with a smile, an actor with charm, and I will defy
our old friend Aristotle."

"Is it as easy as that?" I asked, in amazement.

"No," said he, "it's confoundedly difficult to find the girl with the
smile and the actor with charm. It is pure accident. There are players
of international reputation who can't draw a dollar. There are chits of
chorus-girls who can play a night of sixteen hundred dollars in
Youngstown, Ohio."

"And the play doesn't matter?" I inquired.

"There you've got me," said Frohman, as the crepes Suzette arrived in
their chafing-dish. "My interest makes me pretend that the play's the
thing. I congratulate foreign authors on a week of fourteen thousand
dollars in Chicago, and they go away delighted. But I know, all the
time, that of this sum the star drew thirteen thousand nine hundred
dollars, and the author the rest."

"To what do you attribute such a state of affairs?"

"Feminine curiosity. God bless the women."

"Are there no men in your audiences?" I asked.

"Only those whom the women take," said Frohman. "The others go to
musical shows. Have some more crepes Suzette."

"But what do the critics say?" I persisted.

"My dear Paul," said Frohman, solemnly, "they call me a 'commercial
manager' because I won't play Ibsen or Maeterlinck. They didn't help me
when I tried for higher game. I had years of poverty, years of
privation. To-day I take advantage of a general feminine desire to view
Miss Tottie Coughdrop; and, to the critics, I'm a mere Bulgarian, a
'commercial manager.' So was Lester Wallack when he admitted