kick your--, I have come to weep."

THE COMIQUES September, 1846

Potier, having grown old, played at the Porte Saint Martin towards the
close of his life. He was the same in the street as he was on the stage.
Little boys would follow him, saying: "There is Potier!" He had a small
cottage near Paris and used to come to rehearsals mounted on a small
horse, his long thin legs dangling nearly to the ground.

Tiercelin was a Hellenist. Odry is a connoisseur of chinaware. The
elephantine Lepeintre junior runs into debt and lives the life of a
_coquin de neuveu_.

Alcide Tousez, Sainville and Ravel carry on in the green room just as
they do on the stage, inventing cock-and-bull yarns and cracking jokes.

Arnal composes classic verse, admires Samson, waxes wrath because the
cross has not been conferred upon him. And, in the green room, with
rouge on his nose and cheeks and a wig on his head, talks, between two
slaps in the face given or received, about Guizot's last speech, free
trade and Sir Robert Peel; he interrupts himself, makes his entry upon
the stage, plays his part, returns and gravely resumes: "I was saying
that Robert Peel----"

Poor Arnal recently was driven almost insane. He had a mistress whom he
adored. This woman fleeced him. Having become rich enough she said to
him: "Our position is an immoral one and an end must be put to it. An
honest man has offered me his name and I am going to get married." Arnal
was disconsolate. "I give you the preference," said the belle, "marry
me." Arnal is married. The woman left him and has become a bourgeoise.
Arnal nearly lost his reason through grief. This does not prevent him
from playing his pasquinades every night at the Vaudeville. He makes
fun of his ugliness, of his age, of the fact that he is pitted with
small-pox--laughs at all those things that prevented him from pleasing
the woman he loved, and makes the public laugh--and his heart is broken.
Poor red queue! What eternal and incurable sorrows there be in the
gaiety of a buffoon! What a lugubrious business is that of laughter!

MADEMOISELLE GEORGES. October, 23, 1867.

Mlle. George came to see me to-day. She was sad, and elegantly dressed
in a blue dress with white stripes. She said: "I am weary and disgusted.
I asked for Mars' reversion. They granted me a pension of two thousand
francs which they do not pay. Just a mouthful of bread, and even that I
do not get a chance to eat! They wanted