Balzac’s last play, “Le Faiseur,” was produced for the first time at the Gymnase, a year after his death, under the title of “Mercadet.” Its success was immediate, and its hundredth performance was the occasion of an article by Albéric Second in “Le Constitutionnel,” 18 June, 1852, which is at once so graceful and fantastic that its reproduction here cannot fail to afford some pleasure to the readers of the “Comédie Humaine:”— The hundredth performance of “Mercadet” was given the other evening at the Gymnase-Dramatique. “Mercadet” is, it will be remembered, the posthumous piece of M. de Balzac, which at the time of its production excited such great curiosity. Without any previous agreement, but none the less certain of meeting, a dozen of us, all passionate admirers of the illustrious deceased, found ourselves, that evening, intermingled with the line which from six o’clock in the evening had been undulating from the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle to the door of the theatre. We had all assisted ten months before at the first representation of the play, and we piously reassembled at this jubilee of glory and genius in the same manner as we had gone the year before, and in the same manner that each year we shall go, on the 18th of August, to wreathe with immortelles the tomb of the great writer. M. de Balzac was not one of those who inspire lukewarm affection, and they who have had the honor of knowing him preserve his memory religiously in their hearts. That life of his, full of struggles incessantly renewed, the hourly and truceless combat which he waged, sum up so completely the existence of the literary men of the nineteenth century that it is impossible for us to consider his grand and mournful figure otherwise than as the personification of an entire class. It is for this reason that God, who is sovereignly just, will accord to him hereafter a glory as great and incontestable as his life was tormented and sad. It is for this reason that it behooves us, who are the humble sacristans of the temple in which he was the radiant high priest, to see that his altars are ever adorned with fresh flowers and that the incense ceaselessly burns in the censers.