oliere, it is
true, wrote and acted farces, until he glided into a higher style; but
the more genteel authors and actors of the present time, will not so far
condescend. They willingly produce and perform the most pitiful
buffooneries, but then it is under a better sounding title. They look to
the letter and not the spirit; admit the thing, but repudiate the name.
_Les farceurs!_ Arnal, of course, follows the fashion of the times,
although too sensible a fellow, we suspect, to care a rush about the
matter. For the last twenty years he has been the chief prop of the
Vaudeville, where he performs for ten months out of the twelve, at a
salary of fourteen hundred pounds, with _feux_ or allowances of twenty
francs for every act he plays in. His first appearance was in the
tragic character of Mithridates, in which he convulsed his audience with
laughter. Convinced by this experiment that tragedy was not his line, he
turned his attention to low comedy, and enacted Jocrisse. "In this
part," he says, in a very clever poetical epistle to his friend Bouffe,
"I was allowed to be tolerably amusing, but all declared that I was much
more comic in Mithridates." Off the stage there is nothing particularly
funny in Arnal's appearance. The expression of his face, which is much
marked with the small pox, is quiet and serious, and it is by this same
seriousness that he makes his hearers laugh. When acting, nothing will
extort a smile from him. Gifted with extreme self-possession and a ready
wit, he now and then embroiders his parts, always with the happiest
effect. The excessive dryness with which he gives out his jokes often
constitutes their chief merit. To enumerate his crack characters, those
which he may be said to have created, would be too long a task. The
_Poltron_ is one of his best, and the story goes that his valet, who had
been a soldier, having seen him perform it, gave him warning the next
morning, declaring that he could not possibly remain in the service of
so inveterate a coward. Some of his happiest efforts have been made in
little one-act drolleries for two performers; such as _Passe Minuit_,
where he is ably seconded by Bardou. "In private life, Arnal is grave,
taciturn, and fond of study; he is said to be a regular frequenter of
the _Bibliotheque Royale_, and has published, besides his epistle to
Bouffe, a collection of prettily versified tales and fables." The letter
to Bouffe is an amusing, and witty sketch of his own c