CHAPTER XXV. The First Night of "revolte."

THE FIRST NIGHT OF "REVOLTE."

"Ready for the first act!"

That cry from the stage manager, standing, with his hands at his mouth like a trumpet, at the foot of the actors' stairway, soars upward in its lofty well, rolls hither and thither, loses itself in the recesses of passage-ways filled with the noise of closing doors and hurried footsteps, of despairing calls to the wig-maker and the dressers, while on the landings of the different floors, slowly and majestically, holding their heads perfectly still for fear of disarranging the slightest detail of their costumes, all the characters of the first act of Revolte appear one by one, clad in elegant modern ball costumes, with much creaking of new shoes, rustling of silk trains, and clanking of handsome bracelets pushed up by the gloves in process of being buttoned. They all seem excited, nervous, pale under their paint, and little shivers pass in waves of shadow over the skilfully prepared velvety flesh of shoulders drenched with white lead. They talk but little, their mouths are dry. The most self-assured, while affecting to smile, have in their eyes and their voices the hesitation of absent-mindedness, that feeling of apprehension of the battle before the footlights which will always be one of the most potent attractions of the actor's profession, its piquancy, its ever-recurring springtime.

On the crowded stage, where scene-shifters and machinists are running hither and thither, jostling one another in the soft, snowy light from the wings, soon to give place, when the curtain rises, to the brilliant light from the theatre, Cardailhac in black coat and white cravat, his hat cocked over one ear, casts a last glance over the arrangement of the scenery, hastens the workmen, compliments the ingenue, humming a tune the while, radiant and superb. To see him, no one would ever suspect the terrible anxieties by which his mind is beset. As he was involved with all the others in the Nabob's downfall, in which his stock company was swallowed up, he is staking his little all on the play to be given this evening, and will be forced--if it does not succeed--to leave this marvellous scenery, these rich stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid for. His fourth failure is staring him in the face. But, deuce take it! our manager has confidence. Success, like all the monsters that feed on man, loves youth; and this unknown author whose name is entirely new on the posters, flatters the gambler's superstitions.

Andre Maranne is not so confident. As the time for the performance draws near, he loses faith in his work, dismayed by the sight of the crowded hall, which he surveys through a hole in the curtain as through the small end of a stereoscope.

A magnificent audience, filling the hall to the ceiling, despite the lateness of the season and the fashionable taste for going early to the country; for Cardailhac, the declared foe of nature and the country, who always struggles to keep Parisians in Paris as late as possible, has succeeded in filling his theatre, in making it as brilliant as in mid-winter. Fifteen hundred heads swarming under the chandeliers, erect, leaning forward, turned aside, questioning, with a great abundance of shadows and reflections; some massed in the dark corners of the pit, others brilliantly illuminated by the reflection of the white walls of the lobby shining through the open doors of the boxes; a first-night audience, always the same, that collective brigand from the theatrical columns of the newspapers, who goes everywhere and carries by assault those much-envied places when some claim to favor or the exercise of some public function does not give them to him.

In the orchestra-stalls, lady-killers, clubmen, glistening craniums with broad bald streaks fringed with scanty hair, light gloves, huge opera-glasses levelled at the boxes. In the galleries, a medley of castes and fine dresses, all the names well known at functions of the sort, and the embarrassing promiscuousness which seats the chaste, modest smile of the virtuous woman beside the eyes blazing with kohl and the lips streaked with vermilion of the other kind. White hats, pink hats, diamonds and face paint. Higher up, the boxes present the same scene of confusion: actresses and courtesans, ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics solemn of manner and frowning, lying back in their chairs with the impassive gloom of judges beyond the reach of corruption. The proscenium boxes are ablaze with light and splendor, occupied by celebrities of the world of finance, decolletee, bare-armed women, gleaming with jewels like the Queen of Sheba when she visited the King of the Jews. But one of those great boxes on the left is entirely unoccupied, and attracts general attention by its peculiar decoration, lighted by a Moorish lantern at the rear. Over the whole assemblage hovers an impalpable floating dust, the flickering of the gas, which mingles its odor with all Parisian recreations, and its short, sharp wheezing like a consumptive's breath, accompanying the slow waving of fans. And with all the rest, ennui, deathly ennui, the ennui of seeing the same faces always in the same seats, with their affectations or their defects, the monotony of society functions, which results every winter in turning Paris into a backbiting provincial town, more gossipy and narrow-minded than the provinces themselves.

Maranne noticed that sullen humor, that evident weariness on the part of the audience, and as he reflected upon the change that would be wrought by the success of his drama in his modest life, now made up entirely of hopes, he asked himself, in an agony of dread, what he could do to bring his thoughts home to that multitude of human beings, to force them to lay aside their preoccupied manner, to set in motion in that vast throng a single current which would attract to him those distraught glances, those minds, now scattered over all the notes in the key-board and so difficult to bring into harmony. Instinctively he sought friendly faces, a box opposite the stage filled by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the younger girls in front, and behind them Aline and their father, a lovely family group, like a bouquet dripping with dew in a display of artificial flowers. And while all Paris was asking disdainfully: "Who are those people?" the poet placed his destiny in those little fairy-like hands, newly gloved for the occasion, which would boldly give the signal for applause when it was time.

"Clear the stage!" Maranne has barely time to rush into the wings; and suddenly he hears, far, very far away, the first words of his play, rising, like a flock of frightened birds, in the silence and immensity of the theatre. A terrible moment! Where should he go? What would become of him? Should he remain there leaning against a post, with ears strained and a feeling of tightness at his heart; to encourage the actors when he was so in need of encouragement himself? He prefers to confront the danger face to face, and he glides through a little door into the lobby outside the boxes and stops at a box on the first tier which he opens softly.--"Sh!--it's I." Some one is sitting in the shadow, a woman whom all Paris knows, and who keeps out of sight. Andre takes his place beside her, and sitting side by side, invisible to all, the mother and son, trembling with excitement, watch the performance.

The audience was dumbfounded at first. The Theatre des Nouveautes, situated at the heart of the boulevard, where its main entrance was a blaze of light, among the fashionable restaurants and select clubs,--a theatre to which small parties used to adjourn after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama which does the same for our morals. Cardailhac was especially bent upon justifying his title of "manager of the Nouveautes," and since the Nabob's millions had been behind the undertaking, he had striven to give the frequenters of the boulevard some dazzling surprises. That of this evening surpassed them all: the play was in verse--and virtuous.

FOOTNOTES:

Novelties.

A virtuous play!

The old monkey had realized that the time had come to try that coup, and he tried it. After the first moments of amazement, and a few melancholy ejaculations here and there in the boxes: "Listen! it's in verse!" the audience began to feel the charm of that elevating, healthy work, as if someone had shaken over it, in that rarefied atmosphere, some cool essence, pleasant to inhale, an elixir of life perfumed with the wild thyme of the hillsides.

"Ah! this is fine--it is restful."

That was the general exclamation, a thrill of comfort, a bleat of satisfaction accompanying each line. It was restful to the corpulent Hemerlingue, puffing in his proscenium box on the ground floor, as in a sty of cherry-colored satin. It was restful to tall Suzanne Bloch, in her antique head-dress with crimps peeping out from under a diadem of gold; and Amy Ferat beside her, all in white like a bride, sprigs of orange-blossoms in her hair dressed a la chien, it was restful to her, too.

There were numbers of such creatures there, some very stout with an unhealthy stoutness picked up in all sorts of seraglios, triple-chinned and with an idiotic look; others absolutely green despite their rouge, as if they had been dipped in a bath of that arsenite of copper known to commerce as "Paris green," so faded and wrinkled that they kept out of sight in the back of their boxes, letting nothing be seen save a bit of white arm or a still shapely shoulder. Then there were old beaux, limp and stooping, of the type then known as little creves, with protruding neck and hanging lips, incapable of standing straight, or of uttering a word without a break. And all these people exclaimed as one man: "This is fine--it is restful." Beau Moessard hummed it like a tune under his little blond moustache, while his queen in a first tier box opposite translated it into her barbarous foreign tongue. Really it was restful to them. But they did not say why they needed rest, from what heart-sickening toil, from what enforced task as idlers and utterly useless creatures.

All these well-disposed murmurs, confused and blended, began to give the theatre the aspect that it wore on great occasions. Success was in the air, faces became brighter, the women seemed embellished by the reflection of the prevailing enthusiasm, of glances as thrilling as applause. Andre, sitting beside his mother, thrilled with an unfamiliar pleasure, with that proud delight which one feels in stirring the emotions of a crowd, even though it be as a street-singer in the faubourgs, with a patriotic refrain and two tremulous notes in one's voice. Suddenly the whispering redoubled, changed into a tumult. People began to move about and laugh sneeringly. What was happening? Some accident on the stage? Andre, leaning forward in dismay toward his actors, who were no less surprised than himself, saw that all the opera-glasses were levelled at the large proscenium box, empty until then, which some one had just entered and had taken his seat there, both elbows on the velvet rail, opera-glass in hand, in ominous solitude.

The Nabob had grown twenty years older in ten days. Those impulsive Southern natures, rich as they are in enthusiastic outbursts, in irresistible spurts of flame, collapse more utterly than others. Since his rejection by the Chamber the poor fellow had remained shut up in his own room, with the curtains drawn, refusing to see the daylight or to cross the threshold beyond which life awaited him, engagements he had entered into, promises made, a wilderness of protests and summonses. The Levantine having gone to some watering-place, attended by her masseur and her negresses, absolutely indifferent to the ruin of the family,--Bompain, the man in the fez, aghast amid the constant demands for money, being utterly at a loss to know how to approach his unfortunate employer, who was always in bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as any one mentioned business to him,--the old mother was left alone to struggle with the disaster, with the limited, guileless knowledge of a village widow, who knows what a stamped paper is, and a signature, and who considers honor the most precious possession on earth. Her yellow cap appeared on every floor of the great mansion, overlooking the bills, introducing reforms among the servants, heedless of outcries and humiliations. At every hour in the day the good woman could be seen striding along Place Vendome, gesticulating, talking to herself, saying aloud: "Bah! I'll go and see the bailiff." And she never consulted her son except when it was indispensable, and then only in a few concise words, careful to avoid looking at him. To arouse Jansoulet from his torpor nothing less would suffice than a despatch from Paul de Gery at Marseille, announcing his arrival with ten millions. Ten millions, that is to say, failure averted, a possibility of standing erect once more, of beginning life anew. And behold our Southerner, rebounding from the depths to which he had fallen, drunk with joy and hope. He ordered the windows to be thrown open, newspapers to be brought. What a magnificent opportunity that first night of Revolte would afford him to show himself to the Parisians, who believed that he had gone under, to re-enter the great eddying whirlpool through the folding doors of his box at the Nouveautes! His mother, warned by an instinctive dread, made a slight effort to hold him back. Paris terrified her now. She would have liked to take her child away to some secluded corner in the South, to care for him with the Elder, both ill with the disease of the great city. But he was the master. It was impossible to resist the will of that man whom wealth had spoiled. She helped him to dress, "made him handsome," as she laughingly said, and watched him not without a certain pride as he left the house, superb, revivified, almost recovered from the terrible prostration of the last few days.

Jansoulet quickly remarked the sensation caused by his presence in the theatre. Being accustomed to such exhibitions of curiosity, he usually responded to them without the least embarrassment, with his kindly, expansive smile; but this time the manifestation was unfriendly, almost insulting.

"What!--is that he?"

"There he is!"

"What impudence!"

Such exclamations went up from the orchestra stalls, mingled with many others. The seclusion and retirement in which he had taken refuge for the past few days had left him in ignorance of the public exasperation in his regard, the sermons, the dithyrambs with which the newspapers were filled on the subject of his corrupting wealth, articles written for effect, hypocritical verbiage to which public opinion resorts from time to time to revenge itself on the innocent for all its concessions to the guilty. It was a terrible disappointment, which caused him at first more pain than anger. Deeply moved, he concealed his distress behind his opera-glass, turning three-fourths away from the audience and giving close attention to the slightest details of the performance, but unable to avoid the scandalized scrutiny of which he was the victim, and which made his ears ring, his temples throb, and covered the dimmed lenses of his opera-glass with multi-colored circles, whirling about in the first vagaries of apoplexy.

When the act came to an end and the curtain fell, he remained, without moving, in that embarrassed attitude; but the louder whispering, no longer restrained by the stage dialogue, and the persistency of certain curious persons who changed their seats in order to obtain a better view of him, compelled him to leave his box, to rush out into the lobby like a wild beast fleeing from the arena through the circus.

Under the low ceiling, in the narrow circular passage common in theatre lobbies, he stumbled upon a compact crowd of dandies, newspaper men, women in gorgeous hats, tightly laced, laughers by trade, shrieking with idiotic laughter as they leaned against the wall. From the open boxes, which sought a breath of fresh air from that swarming, noisy corridor, issued broken, confused fragments of conversation:

"A delightful play. It is so fresh and clean!"

"That Nabob! What insolence!"

"Yes, it really is very restful. One feels the better for--"

"How is it he hasn't been arrested yet?"

"A very young man, it seems; this is his first play."

"Bois-l'Hery at Mazas!--It isn't possible. There's the marchioness just opposite us in the first gallery, with a new hat."

"What does that prove? She's plying her trade of lanceuse. That's a very pretty hat, by the way--the colors of Desgranges' horse."

"And Jenkins? What has become of Jenkins?"

"At Tunis with Felicia. Old Brahim saw them both. It seems that the bey has taken a decided liking to the pearls."

"Bigre!"

Farther on, sweet voices whispered:

"Go, father, do go. See how entirely alone he is, poor man."

"But I don't know him, children."

"Even so, just a bow. Something to show him that he isn't utterly abandoned."

Whereupon a little old gentleman, in a white cravat, with a very red face, darted to meet the Nabob and saluted him with a respectful flourish of his hat. How gratefully, with what an eager, pleasant smile, was that single salutation returned, that salutation from a man whom Jansoulet did not know, whom he had never seen, but who, nevertheless, exerted a very great influence upon his destiny; for, except for Pere Joyeuse, the president of the council of the Territoriale would probably have shared the fate of the Marquis de Bois-l'Hery. So it is that in the network of modern society, that vast labyrinth of selfish interests, ambitions, services accepted and rendered, all castes communicate between themselves, mysteriously connected by hidden bonds, from the most elevated to the humblest existences; therein lies the explanation of the variegated coloring, the complication of this study of manners, the assemblage of scattered threads of which the writer with a regard for truth is compelled to make the groundwork of his drama.

Glances cast vaguely into the air, steps turned aimlessly aside, hats pulled abruptly over the eyes, in ten minutes the Nabob was subjected to all the outward manifestations of that terrible ostracism of Parisian society, where he had neither kindred nor substantial connections of any sort, and where contempt isolated him more surely than respect isolates a sovereign when paying a visit. He staggered with embarrassment and shame. Some one said aloud: "He has been drinking," and all that the poor man could do was to go back into the salon of his box and close the door. Ordinarily that little retiro was filled during the entr'actes with financiers and journalists. They laughed and talked and smoked there, making a great uproar; the manager always came to pay his respects to his partner. That evening, not a soul. And the absence of Cardailhac, with his keen scent for success, showed Jansoulet the full measure of his disgrace.

"What have I done to them? Why is it that Paris will no longer have anything to do with me?"

He questioned himself thus in a solitude which was emphasized by the sounds all about, the sudden turning of keys in the doors of boxes, the innumerable exclamations of an amused crowd. Then suddenly the newness of his luxurious surroundings, the odd shadows cast by the Moorish lantern on the brilliant silk covering of the couch and the hangings reminded him of the date of his arrival. Six months! Only six months since he arrived in Paris! Everything consumed and vanished in six months! He relapsed into a sort of torpor from which he was aroused by enthusiastic applause and bravos. Clearly this play of Revolte was a great success. They had now reached the powerful, satirical passages; and the virulent declamation, a little emphatic in tone but relieved by a breath of youth and sincerity, made every heart beat fast after the idyllic effusions of the first act. Jansoulet determined to look and listen with the rest. After all, the theatre belonged to him. His seat in that proscenium box had cost him more than a million; surely the least he was entitled to was the privilege of occupying it.

Behold him seated once more at the front of his box. In the hall a heavy, suffocating heat, stirred but not dissipated by the waving fans, their glittering spangles mingling their reflections with the impalpable outbreathings of the silence. The audience listened intently to an indignant and spirited passage against the pirates, so numerous at that period, who had become cocks of the roost after long haunting the darkest corners to rob all who passed. Certainly Maranne, when he wrote those fine lines, had had nobody less in his mind than the Nabob. But the audience saw in them an allusion to him; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the end of the tirade, all eyes were turned toward the box on the left, with an indignant, openly insulting movement. The poor wretch, pilloried in his own theatre! A pillory that had cost him so dear! That time he did not seek to avoid the affront, but settled himself resolutely on his seat, with folded arms, and defied that crowd, which stared at him with its hundreds of upturned, sneering faces, that virtuous All-Paris which took him for a scapegoat and drove him forth after loading all its crimes upon him.

A pretty assemblage, in sooth, for such an exhibition! Opposite, the box of an insolvent banker, the wife and the lover side by side in front, the husband in the shadow, neglected and grave. At one side the frequent combination of a mother who has married her daughter according to her (the mother's) own heart, and to make the man she loved her son-in-law. Contraband couples too, courtesans flaunting the price of their shame, diamonds in circlets of flame riveted around arms and necks like dog-collars, stuffing themselves with bonbons, which they swallowed in gluttonous, beastly fashion because an exhibition of the animal nature in woman pleases those who pay for it. And those groups of effeminate fops, with low collars and painted eyebrows, whose embroidered lawn shirts and white satin corsets aroused admiration in the guest chambers at Compiegne; mignons of Agrippa's day, who called one another: "My heart," or "My dear love." Scandal and wickedness in every form, consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of grandeur or originality, attempting to copy the freaks of all other epochs, and contributing to the Jardin Bullier that duchess, the wife of a minister of state, who rivalled the most shameless dancers of that resort. And they were the people who turned their back upon him, who cried out to him: "Begone! You are unworthy."

"I unworthy! Why, I am worth a hundred times more than the whole of you, vile wretches! You reproach me with my millions. In God's name, who helped me squander them?--Look you, you cowardly, treacherous friend, hiding in the corner of your box your fat carcass like a sick pasha's! I made your fortune as well as my own in the days when we shared everything like brothers.--And you, sallow-faced marquis, I paid a hundred thousand francs at the club to prevent your being expelled in disgrace.--I covered you with jewels, you hussy, so letting people think you were my mistress, because that is good form in our circle, and never asked you for anything in return.--And you, brazen-faced journalist, with no other brains than the dregs of your inkstand, and with as many leprous spots on your conscience as your queen has on her skin, you consider that I didn't pay you what you were worth, and that's the secret of your insults.--Yes, yes, look at me, canaille! I am proud. I am better than you."

All that he said thus to himself, in a frenzy of wrath, visible in the trembling of his thick, pallid lips, the unhappy man, upon whom madness was swooping down, was, perhaps, on the point of shouting aloud in the silence, of pouring out a flood of maledictions upon that insulting mob, and, who can say? of leaping down into the midst of them and killing some one, ah! God's blood! of killing some one, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder; and he saw a blond head, a frank, grave face, and two outstretched hands which he grasped convulsively, like a drowning man.

"Ah! my dear--my dear--" stammered the poor man. But he had no strength to say more. That grateful emotion coming upon him in the midst of his frenzy, melted it into a sob of tears, of blood, of choking speech. His face became purple. He motioned: "Take me away." And, leaning on Paul de Gery's arm, he stumbled through the door of his box and fell to the floor in the lobby.

"Bravo! bravo!" shouted the audience at the conclusion of the actor's tirade; and there was a noise as of a hail-storm, an enthusiastic stamping,--while the great inert body, borne by scene-shifters, passed through the brilliantly-lighted wings, obstructed by men and women crowding around the entrances to the stage, excited by the atmosphere of success, and hardly noticing the passage of that lifeless victim carried in men's arms like the victim of a street affray. They laid him on a couch in the property room, Paul de Gery by his side with a physician and two attendants who were eager to help. Cardailhac, who was very busy with the performance, had promised to come and see how he was getting on, "in a moment, after the fifth act."

Bloodletting upon bloodletting, cupping, plasters, nothing produced even a twitching of the skin in the sick man, who was insensible to all the methods of resuscitation usually resorted to in cases of apoplexy. A relaxation of every fibre of his being seemed to give him over to death, to prepare his body for the rigidity of the corpse; and that in the most dismal place on earth, chaos lighted by a dark lantern, where all the debris of plays that had been performed, gilded furniture, hangings with gorgeous fringe, carriages, strong boxes, card-tables, discarded flights of stairs and banisters, were heaped together pell-mell under the dust, among ropes and pulleys, a wilderness of damaged, broken, demolished, cast-off stage properties. Bernard Jansoulet, as he lay amid that wreckage, his shirt torn away from his chest, at once bleeding and bloodless, was the typical shipwrecked victim of life, bruised and cast ashore with the pitiable debris of his artificial splendor broken and scattered by the Parisian whirlpool. Paul, broken-hearted, gazed sadly at that face with its short nose, retaining in its inert condition the wrathful yet kindly expression of an inoffensive creature who tried to defend himself before dying, but had no time to bite. He blamed himself for his inability to serve him to any useful purpose. What had become of that fine project of his of leading Jansoulet through the quagmires, of saving him from ambuscades? All that he had been able to do was to rescue a few millions, and even those came too late.

* * * * *

The windows were opened on the balcony overlooking the boulevard, then at its full tide of noise and animation, and blazing with light. The theatre was surrounded with rows of gas-jets, a circle of flame lighting up the most obscure recesses where flickering lanterns gleamed like stars travelling through the dark sky. The play was done. The audience was leaving the theatre. The dark throng moved in a compact mass down the steps and scattered to right and left along the white sidewalks, to spread through the city the news of a great success and the name of an unknown author, who would be illustrious and famous on the morrow. A most enjoyable evening, causing the restaurant windows to blaze with delight and the streets to be filled with long lines of belated carriages. That holiday uproar, of which the poor Nabob had been so fond and which was well adapted to the giddy whirl of his existence, aroused him for a second. His lips moved, and his staring eyes, turned toward de Gery, assumed in presence of death a sorrowful, imploring, rebellious expression, as if to call upon him to bear witness to one of the greatest, the most cruel acts of injustice that Paris ever committed.

THE END.

* * * * *

=George Sand's Works in English.=

MAUPRAT. ANTONIA. THE BAGPIPERS. MONSIEUR SYLVESTRE. THE SNOW MAN. NANON. THE MILLER OF ANGIBAULT.

As to "Mauprat," if there were any doubts as to George Sand's power, it would forever set them at rest.--Harper's Monthly.

=12mo. Half Russia, uniform with Balzac's Novels. Each, $1.50.=

* * * * *

=Little Classics, by George Sand.=

FADETTE. FRANCOIS THE WAIF. THE DEVIL'S POOL. THE MASTER MOSAIC WORKERS.

Translated by Jane Minot Sedgwick, Ellery Sedgwick, and Charlotte C. Johnston. With etched frontispieces by Abot and an etched portrait of Titian.

=16mo. Cloth, extra, gilt top. Each, $1.25.=

Studies of rustic life, of which "La Petite Fadette," "Francois le Champi," and "La Mare au Diable" are the chief, and which some of her admirers regard as her greatest works.--George Saintsbury, in Chambers' Cyclopaedia.

No description is needed of works so well known as "La Petite Fadette," "La Mare au Diable," and "Francois le Champi." Like Wordsworth, with the inward eye she sees into the life of things.--Encyclopaedia Britannica.

"The Master Mosaic Workers" is one of the most delightful of historical novels, and gives a vivid picture of the life in Venice at the time when Titian, Tintoretto, and Giorgione were in their zenith, and when the famous mosaics which still adorn St. Mark's were being made.--Literary World.

* * * * *

=George Sand's Convent Life.=

Translated from "L'Histoire de ma Vie" by Maria Ellery McKaye.

These brief chapters from a fragmentary autobiography of the famous French author have been translated from the published memoirs, and are much more familiar in France than here. They relate to George Sand's girlhood, and cover only a few years, and yet are written with that vivid and picturesque charm peculiar to all her writings. They show us, with much force and interest, the kind of life which young girls led in convents seventy years ago.--N. Y. Times.

=16mo. Cloth. With portrait. $1.00.=

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LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS,

254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.

=The New Library Moliere.=

TRANSLATED BY KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY.

TRANSLATOR OF BALZAC'S NOVELS.

With Preface to Moliere's Works by Honore de Balzac, Criticisms on the Author by Sainte-Beuve, Portraits by Coypel and Mignard, and decorative Titlepages.

=Arrangement of the Plays.=

Vol. I. The Misanthrope; Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Vol. II. Tartuffe; Les Precieuses Ridicules; George Dandin. Vol. III. Les Femmes Savantes; Le Malade Imaginaire. Vol. IV. L'Avare; Don Juan; Les Facheux. Vol. V. L'Ecole des Femmes; L'Ecole des Maris; Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. Vol. VI. L'Etourdi; Le Mariage Force; Le Medecin Malgre Lui; La Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes.

* * * * *

All are familiar with Miss Wormeley's admirable English version of Balzac; and we know of no greater praise in behalf of her recent translation of Moliere than to say it betrays the same knowledge, skill, and insight that has made her name famous among the lovers of high literature. While it is undoubtedly true that the student of Moliere would turn by preference to the original, it is equally true that those who cannot read his works in their native form are now indebted to Miss Wormeley for an appreciation of Sainte-Beuve's declaration "that to love Moliere is to love uprightness and health of mind, in others as well as in ourselves." She did a splendid service for two literatures by her admirable English rendering of the author whom many regard as France's first novelist, and now she continues by an equally excellent translation of the works of the genius to whom is conceded with still greater unanimity the rank of France's first dramatist. And by a happy thought Miss Wormeley avails herself, for the presentation of Moliere to American readers, of the eloquent tribute which Balzac paid to him in his preface to his own edition of Moliere, issued in his younger days. The translator also calls attention to the singular parallel afforded in the lives of the two writers. These "fathers of the 'Comedy of Human Life' and of realism," she says, "died at the same age (fifty-one); the fame of both was of little more than fifteen years' duration in their lifetime; both died of the toil to which their genius impelled them; and both are going down with ever-brightening lustre to posterity."--Boston Budget.

=12mo. Half leather. Per volume, $1.50.=

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Orders may be addressed to

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=PASTELS OF MEN.=

BY PAUL BOURGET.

TRANSLATED BY KATHARINE P. WORMELEY,

TRANSLATOR OF BALZAC'S NOVELS.

* * * * *

=First Series=

A SAINT. M. LEGRIMAUDET. TWO LITTLE BOYS: 1. M. Veples' Brother; 2. Marcel.

=Second Series=

MAURICE OLIVIER. A GAMBLER. ANOTHER GAMBLER. JACQUES MOLAN. A LOWLY ONE. CORSEQUES.

The title suggests the character of the stories, which are, for the most part, miniature studies of men and women, done with exquisite grace and with no little power. M. Bourget is just now one of the foremost figures among contemporary French writers. He is a critic as well as a novelist.--Christian Union.

=2 volumes. 16mo. Cloth. Each, $1.00=.

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=A SAINT. By Paul Bourget.=

From the "Pastels of Men." Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. With 12 illustrations by Paul Chabas.

=12mo. Parchment. $1.00.=

The "saint" is an old monk who lives with only two others in one of those old monasteries in Italy which, since the government decree, have gradually fallen into disuse. It is a beautiful little story, in which we are taught the lesson of Christ's manner of dealing with those who are tempted and go astray, and are brought back into the right path.--Boston Times.

M. Bourget is a master of literary art; his portraits are drawn with a wonderful distinctness, and with a realism that is as true to the possibilities of human nature as it is fascinating.--Boston Home Journal.

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LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.

=The Romances of Victor Hugo=.

LIBRARY EDITION.

Including important passages and chapters hitherto omitted.

WITH 28 PORTRAITS AND PLATES.

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=LIST OF STORIES.=

Les Miserables. 5 vols. Notre Dame. 2 vols. Ninety-Three, 1 vol. The Man who Laughs. 2 vols. Toilers of the Sea. 2 vols. Hans of Iceland, 1 vol. Bug-Jargal; Claude Gueux; The Last Day of a Condemned, 1 vol.

14 vols. 12mo. Decorated cloth, gilt top, $1.50 per volume; plain cloth, $1.25 per volume; half calf or half morocco, gilt top, $3.00 per volume.

Any story supplied separately in cloth.

Large handsome type, clear white paper, and choicely decorated covers combine to make this the most beautiful and desirable library edition of these great works.

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To what other man can we attribute such sweeping innovations, such a new and significant presentment of the life of man, such an amount, if we merely think of the amount, of equally consummate performance.--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

A model edition for use and convenience.--Cincinnati Commercial Gazette.

A permanent, delightful book to all good judges of publishing.--The Beacon.

A most beautiful and desirable library edition.--Baltimore American.

A delight to the eye and the touch.--Boston Journal.

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LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS,

254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.

=BRICHANTEAU, ACTOR=.

Translated from the French of

=JULES CLARETIE, Manager of the Comedie Francaise=

With Preface by FRANCISQUE SARCEY.

12mo. Cloth, extra, gilt top. $1.50.

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M. Jules Claretie has had a wide acquaintance with actors. He has had an opportunity of studying them still more closely since he has been the manager of the Comedie Francaise. Brichanteau is charming because he is always treading the boards, because he believes in good faith that his life is a drama, in which he plays the principal part. The work is written with a sprightly and witty pen.--FRANCISQUE SARCEY.

The translation has preserved the sprightly wit and grace of the original, in which all the shades of character, frequently delicate and elusive, are brought out by refined turns of expression.--Philadelphia Press.

As a whole, the book is a delightful and beautiful work of art. The man of whom Claretie writes becomes a living character to us, and we love him as we would such a man in real life.--Cincinnati Tribune.

He is more than a sketch; he is a Meissonier portrait, painted with all that accuracy of detail for which Meissonier was famous.--Boston Literary World.

One of the most pathetically humorous books ever written, and it should become a classic.--St. Louis Mirror.

That there is a lovable, generous, elevated, human and humane picturesqueness to the caricatured strolling player is shown with such admirable truth by Claretie, that his "Brichanteau" deserves permanency among desirable books.--Washington Times.

You love Brichanteau and take him to your heart, for he is an honest fellow, who fights gallantly and merrily with his bad luck.--New York Times.

A lively, amusing, intensely Gallic series of studies of stage life.--The Outlook.

A delicious character, this Brichanteau.--Detroit Free Press.

The author is so witty and the ridiculous side of his hero is so well described that the book is a treat--restful and refreshing.

The delicious absurdity of this "optimist failure," "Brichanteau Actor," reminds one of Don Quixote, while his consummate good nature is almost equal to Sir Roger de Coverley's. The clever French author has made his actor tell for the most part his own story, and in a natural, easy manner--the perfection of polished French style.--Chicago Farm, Field, and Fireside.

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LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS,

254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.

=Alphonse Daudet in English=.

=New Uniform Edition of the Novels, Romances, and Memoirs of Alphonse Daudet, the greatest French Writer since Victor Hugo=. Newly Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, Translator of Balzac's Novels; Jane Minot Sedgwick, Translator of George Sand; Charles de Kay, and others.

=Printed from large clear type, with Frontispieces. Twenty volumes. 12mo. Cloth, gilt top. $1.50 per volume=.

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Arrangement of the volumes.

ALPHONSE DAUDET. By Leon Daudet. To which is added "My Brother and Myself," by Ernest Daudet 1 vol.

FROMONT AND RISLER 1 vol.

THE NABOB 2 vols.

KINGS IN EXILE 1 vol.

NUMA ROUMESTAN 1 vol.

THE LITTLE PARISH and ROBERT HELMONT 1 vol.

LITTLE WHAT'S HIS NAME 1 vol.

TARTARIN OF TARASCON and TARTARIN ON THE ALPS 1 vol.

PORT TARASCON and LA BELLE NIVERNAISE 1 vol.

THIRTY YEARS IN PARIS, etc. 1 vol.

THE IMMORTAL, etc 1 vol.

SOUVENIRS OF A MAN OF LETTERS and ARTISTS' WIVES 1 vol.

THE EVANGELIST and ROSE AND NINETTE 1 vol.

JACK 2 vols.

MONDAY TALES 1 vol.

LETTERS FROM MY MILL, etc 1 vol.

SAPPHO 1 vol.

THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY 1 vol.

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Of the brilliant group of men who have made contemporaneous French literature, of that coterie toward which the eyes of all the reading world have been turned with admiration and interest during the last half a century, Daudet was the greatest. He was the most universal, the most original, the most human.--From an Article in The Book Buyer, by L. Van Vorst.

Has, perhaps, transferred bodily into his writings more actual events, related in the newspapers, in the court-house, or in society, than any other writer of the present age. Of some of his novels one hardly dare say that they are works of fiction; their characters are men and women of our time; they do in the book almost exactly what they had done in real life.--Prof. Adolph Cohn, in The Bookman.

He is a novelist to his finger-tips. No one has such grace, such lightness and brilliancy of execution.--Henry James, in The Century.

The slightest pages from his pen will preserve the vibration of his soul so long as our tongue exists imperishable. He is the author of twenty masterpieces.--EMILE ZOLA.

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LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS,

254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.