his sarcastic humour.

"What, ladies!" said I, "is not M. de Voltaire good-natured, polite, and
affable to you who have been kind enough to act in his plays with him?"

"Not in the least. When he hears us rehearse he grumbles all the time. We
never say a thing to please him: here it is a bad pronunciation, there a
tone not sufficiently passionate, sometimes one speaks too softly,
sometimes too loudly; and it's worse when we are acting. What a hubbub
there is if one add a syllable, or if some carelessness spoil one of his
verses. He frightens us. So and so laughed badly; so and so in Alzire had
only pretended to weep."

"Does he want you to weep really?"

"Certainly. He will have real tears. He says that if an actor wants to
draw tears he must shed them himself."

"I think he is right there; but he should not be so severe with amateurs,
above all with charming actresses like you. Such perfection is only to be
looked for from professionals, but all authors are the same. They never
think that the actor has pronounced the words with the force which the
sense, as they see it, requires."

"I told him, one day, that it was not my fault if his lines had not the
proper force."

"I am sure he laughed."

"Laughed? No, sneered, for he is a rude and impertinent man."

"But I suppose you overlook all these failings?"

"Not at all; we have sent him about his business."

"Sent him about his business?"

"Yes. He left the house he had rented here, at short notice, and retired
to where you will find him now. He never comes to see us now, even if we
ask him."

"Oh, you do ask him, though you sent him about his business?"

"We cannot deprive ourselves of the pleasure of admiring his talents, and
if we have teased him, that was only from revenge, and to teach him
something of the manners of good society."

"You have given a lesson to a great master."

"Yes; but when you see him mention Lausanne, and see what he will say of
us. But he will say it laughingly, that's his way."

During my stay I often saw Lord Rosebury, who had vainly courted my
charming Dubois. I have never known a young man more disposed to silence.
I have been told that he had wit, that he was well educated, and even in
high spirits at times, but he could not get over his shyness, which gave
him an almost indefinable air of stupidity. At balls, assemblies--in
fact, everywhere, his manners consisted of innumerable bows. When one
spoke to him, he replied