s," he answered, conceitedly.

To another who asked him somewhat the same question, he replied,--

"If I were charming to all the world, how could I seem better still to
the one woman I wish to please?"

Raoul Nathan imports this same natural disorder (which he uses as a
banner) into his intellectual life; and the attribute is not misleading.
His talent is very much that of the poor girls who go about in bourgeois
families to work by the day. He was first a critic, and a great critic;
but he felt himself cheated in that vocation. His articles were equal
to books, he said. The profits of theatrical work then allured him;
but, incapable of the slow and steady application required for stage
arrangement, he was forced to associate with himself a vaudevillist, du
Bruel, who took his ideas, worked them over, and reduced them into those
productive little pieces, full of wit, which are written expressly
for actors and actresses. Between them, they had invented Florine, an
actress now in vogue.

Humiliated by this association, which was that of the Siamese twins,
Nathan had produced alone, at the Theatre-Francais, a serious drama,
which fell with all the honors of war amid salvos of thundering
articles. In his youth he had once before appeared at the great and
noble Theatre-Francais in a splendid romantic play of the style of
"Pinto,"--a period when the classic reigned supreme. The Odeon was so
violently agitated for three nights that the play was forbidden by the
censor. This second piece was considered by many a masterpiece, and won
him more real reputation than all his productive little pieces done with
collaborators,--but only among a class to whom little attention is paid,
that of connoisseurs and persons of true taste.

"Make another failure like that," said Emile Blondet, "and you'll be
immortal."

But instead of continuing in that difficult path, Nathan had fallen, out
of sheer necessity, into the powder and patches of eighteenth-century
vaudeville, costume plays, and the reproduction, scenically, of
successful novels.

Nevertheless, he passed for a great mind which had not said its last
word. He had, moreover, attempted permanent literature, having published
three novels, not to speak of several others which he kept in press like
fish in a tank. One of these three books, the first (like that of many
writers who can only make one real trip into literature), had obtained a
very brilliant success. This work, imprud