s sons of Voltaire. Now Monsieur Ernest Legouve will not be
satisfied with his comedy, unless these gentlefolk unanimously decide
that he need not blot a single line of it. Will you come? Remember,
Monsieur Ernest Legouve invites you."

"My dear Count, I willingly accept your proposition. Monsieur Legouve
reads admirably, and his plays are all agreeable. Nevertheless, let me
tell you that this trial will prove nothing. Our poor society is like
Sganarelle's wife, who liked to be thrashed. It has borne smiling, and
repaid with wealth and fame, much more ardent attacks than Monsieur
Legouve can make."

Count de ---- and I shook hands, and parted. A few evenings afterwards
the reading took place. It was just what I expected. There were as many
marquises and duchesses (_real_ duchesses) as there were kings to
applaud Talma in the Erfurt pit. The noble assembly listened to Monsieur
Legouves's comedy with that rather absent-minded urbanity and with those
charming exclamations of admiration which have been constantly given to
everybody who has read a piece in a drawing-room, from the days of the
Viscount d'Arlincourt and his "Le Solitaire," to the days of Monsieur
Viennet, of the French Academy, and his "Arbogaste." Monsieur Legouve's
play, which was then called "Le Nom du Mari," and which has since been
played under the title of "Par Droit de Conquete," was pleasing. My ears
were not so much offended by the antagonism of poor nobility and wealthy
upstarts, which Monsieur Legouve treated neither better nor worse than
any other has done, as by the details of roads, bridges, marsh-draining,
canals, railways, coal, coke, and the like, which were dead-weights on
Thalia's light robe; and the improbability of the plot was not so much
the marriage of a noble girl to the son of an apple-dealer as was the
perfection given to the young engineer: every virtue and every grace
were showered on him. The piece was unanimously pronounced successful.
The aristocratic audience applauded Monsieur Legouve with their little
gloved hands, which never make much noise. He was complimented so
delicately that he was sincerely touched. There was not the slightest
objection, the lightest murmur made to the piece, and there trembled in
my eye that little tear Madame de Sevigne speaks of.

But let us quit this drawing-room, and turn our steps towards the Rue du
Croissant, where the office of "Le Charivari" is to be found. Balzac has
described in "Les Illu