Theatres are to Frenchmen what flowers are to bees: they live _in_ them and _upon_ them, and the sacrifice of liberty appears to be a tribute most willingly paid for the gratification they receive; for, to be sure, never can there exist a more despotic, arbitrary government than that of a French theatre. A soldier stands by from the moment you quit your carriage till you get into it; you are allowed no will of your own; if you wish to give directions to your servant, "Vite! Vite!" cries a whiskered sentry. Are you looking through the windows of the lobbies into the boxes for your party, you are ordered off by a gendarme. I saw one gentleman-like-looking man remonstrating; in a trice he was in durance vile. A Frenchman at his play must sit, stand, move, think, and speak as if he were on drill, and yet he endures the intolerance for doubtful benefits derived from this rigid regularity. In this play of "Manlius" were many passages highly applicable to Buonaparte, and Talma, who is supposed to be (_avec raison_) a secret partisan, gave them their full effect, but the listening vassals struck no octaves to his vibration. A few nights before we were at the Play in which were allusions to the Bourbons, and couplets without end of the most fulsome, disgusting compliments to the Duc de Berri, &c. These (shame upon the trifling, vacillating, mutable crew!) were received with loud applause by the majority of the pit. I did observe, however, that in that pit did sit a frowning, solemn, silent nucleus, but a nucleus of this description can never be large; a few Messieurs at 3 francs _par jour_ would soon, when dispersed amongst them, like grains of pepper in tasteless soup, diffuse a tone of palatibility over the whole and render it more agreeable to the taste of a Bourbon.