to engage me at the Historique
(at the Theatre Historique). I refused. What could I do there among
those transparencies! A stout woman like me! Besides, where are the
authors? Where are the pieces? Where are the roles? As to the provinces,
I tried touring last year, but it is impossible without Harel.* I don't
know how to manage actors. How do you think I can get on with these evil
doers? I was to have finished the 24th. I paid them on the 20th, and
fled. I returned to Paris to visit poor Harel's tomb. It is frightful,
a tomb! It is horrible to see his name there on the stone! Yet I did not
weep. I was dry-eyed and cold. What a strange thing is life! To think
that this man who was so clever, so witty, should die an idiot! He
passed his days doing like this with his fingers. Not a spark of reason
remained. It is all over. I shall have Rachel at my benefit; I shall
play with her that chestnut "Iphigenie". We shall make money, but I
don't care. Besides, I'm sure she wouldn't play Rodogune! I will also
play, if you will permit me, an act of "Lucrece Borgia". You see, I am
for Rachel; she is an artful one, if you like. See how she checkmates
those rascally French actors! She renews her engagements, assures for
herself pyrotechnics, vacations, heaps of gold. When the contract is
signed she says: "By the bye, I forgot to tell you that I have been
enceinte for four months; it will be five months before I am able to
play." She does well. If I had done the same thing I shouldn't have to
die like a dog on a litter of straw. Tragedians, you see, are comedians
after all. That poor Dorval, what has become of her, do you know? There
is one to be pitied, if you like! She is playing I know not where, at
Toulouse, at Carpentras, in barns, to earn her living! She is reduced
like me to showing her bald head and dragging her poor old carcass on
badly planed boards behind footlights of four tallow candles, among
strolling actors who have been to the galleys, or who ought to be there!
Ah! Monsieur Hugo, all this is nothing to you who are in good health and
well off, but we are poor miserable creatures!"

* M. Harel was manager of the Porte St. Martin Theatre.
Mlle. Georges lived with him.

TABLEAUX VIVANTS

In the year 1846 there was a spectacle that caused a furore in Paris. It
was that afforded by women attired only in pink tights and a gauze skirt
executing poses that were called _tableaux vivants_, with a few men to