The drama at the Gymnase seemed to me rather a pitiful effort at sensation. There is but one way of treating a priest upon the stage, and it is by placing him in juxtaposition with a woman. He is rarely allowed to be interesting in any other shape. Among actors there is a superstition that regards every play with a priest in it as “unlucky.” The cleric is supposed to “hoodoo” the drama. If I were a playwright I think I should elect to be on the “safe side.” I should take no risks, for very rarely does a priest-ridden drama succeed. “Ces Messieurs” certainly seems to be a case that justifies the actors’ superstition. The heroine of the piece is a young widow, who, after the loss of her husband and child, has given up mundane pleasure. She lives in the provinces, with a large and singularly talky family, and has “taken up” religion. Upon the scene comes the _Abbé Thibaut_, a young priest with good looks and even better intentions. He is eloquent and mystic; _Henriette_ interests herself in him immediately, and gives him funds for his schools and benevolent institutions. _Thibaut_ is ambitious, and he needs the money. The man and woman are soon embroiled in an “affair,” though they are both unconscious of that fact. Other priests occur. One--the villain of the piece--reports _Thibaut_ to the other, a benevolent Monsignor, who is displayed in a luxury of “monsignor” robes. Pettiness, intrigue, jealousy, hatred, malevolence, are ascribed to the _Abbé Morisson_, who is as deep-dyed a villain as one could wish to find in the Third Avenue Theater or the Grand Opera House. Through a sea of talk, the audience is carried to the fourth act--which is _the_ act--where _Henriette_ learns that _Thibaut_ is to be removed from her clutches to another scene of action. Then the storm bursts, and the air is cleared with much electrical sensation. It is not necessary to go into details. All that a woman can say who has horridly mixed up the religious with the secular, the carnal with the mystic, _Henriette_ says, in an ecstasy of exclamation points. _Thibaut_ was essential to her, for she could not pray without him! He was part of her life, both earthly and heavenly. In an exasperation of anguish she develops a sort of insanity that makes a plausible excuse for the ugly irreverence and the blasphemy of the playwright. Blasphemy always seems to me the weakest sort of sensation. Any idiot can blaspheme, and most of them do. It is the keynote of “Ces Messieurs.” The priest is the target at which the woman hurls her ugly shafts. Sensuality masquerading in the cloak of religion renders this heroine as disagreeable as any I have ever seen staged. And this--with nothing more--is M. Ancey’s case against the priests. The _Abbé_ has accepted _Henriette’s_ money for his works of benevolence, and she had given it not because she was actuated by religion, but because she was hopelessly in love with the priest himself, who had involuntarily inspired the sentiment.