The five plays at the Mathurins were “Retour de Bal,” by Claude Real; “Oui! Benoist,” by Rito de Marghy; “Le Chasseur de Tigre Blanc,” by Tristan Bernard; “La Rupture,” by M. Nozière, and “Le Pyjama,” by Jules Rateau. Two of these, the second and fourth, were blood-curdlers, in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, with modern improvements and a Parisian outlook. “Oui! Benoist” was a frenzied effort to be grewsome. The title represents the incessant remark of a country clodhopper to his “boss.” This “boss” was in love with a stout siren, who preferred a neurasthenic gentleman perpetually haunted by a particular melody. This melody had got on his nerves and had made him insane. (I couldn’t help wondering if he had enjoyed a season in musical comedy in New York, for, if so, I could quite understand his case.) _Mathyas_, as he was called, was trying to live down the melody, and nobody dared to hum it in his presence. He was made up with a white face, and dark rings under his eyes. The siren was most solicitous for his welfare. Then came the innings of _Benoist_, the jealous “boss.” There was a well upon the stage, very deep and dark, and--in dismal conspiracy--he prevailed upon the country clodhopper to go down into the well and from its depths sing up the forbidden melody till it reached the neurasthenic gentleman. The scheme worked. No sooner was the invalid upon the stage than from the bowels of the well the luckless dirge emerged. Instantly the patient was stricken. In wild insanity, he took a huge stone, and flung it into the well to kill the music. Groans and anguish from the clodhopper. Agony all over the stage. “Are you mortally hurt, Joseph?” asked the guilty “boss,” peering into the depths. And from the well came up the halting murmur, “_Oui, Benoist!_” as the curtain fell. The other blood-curdler was “La Rupture,” which introduced Mme. Polaire, a lady who has had a multi-colored career. At one time she was a sort of rival of Yvette Guilbert. At present she does the melodramatic upon the slightest provocation. Her “attraction” is her ugliness--her extreme and unmitigated homeliness. Even that sort of thing is popular in fatigued Paris. A woman who is homely to the verge of distraction may be as great a draw as her sister who is just as bewilderingly beautiful. It is the extremes that meet.