Except when Lena Ashwell comes with her English concert-party, evening entertainments--that is, public entertainments--in Rouen are limited by some cinemas and two theatres that stage _revue_. The cinemas are like all other cinemas, except that the humour is broader and sexual intrigue is shown in a more fleshly and passionate form. The audience differs from an English, not in that flirtation is more fierce, but in the running fire of comment directed at the film, and from the way in which crises in the plot are hailed. Everyone smokes who has the habit. The women who do not, masticate noisily at sweets. The girls in the front row of stalls playfully pull the hair of the orchestra, specialising in the 'cello: his deep, detached notes amuse them. This is their way of showing he attracts their attention. The conductor is the pianist too. In his dual capacity he displays astounding resource and agility. The combination of these functions is diverting, even in an Englishman. The films present a preponderance of carnal domestic problems. _Revue_ is another story. An Englishman has no right to attend French _revue_ without being prepared to discount it at a rate governed by the difference between the national temperaments. Where English _revue_ suggests and insinuates, French explicates the detail. French insinuates too, on occasion, but with the motive of subtlety as distinct from that of English furtiveness: the difference between cleverness and morbidity. All this applies to _amours_, chiefly between the already-married. French _revue_ goes further, and deals disgustingly in physiological detail which the English stage declines to handle even by implication. And the ladies on the stage are obviously amused by the cruder passages to an unprofessional degree. They giggle outright. The work on the stage, in fact, is curiously informal. Dialogue _sotto voce_ in the corners is not make-believe--nor rehearsed. They carry on a genuine conversation, much of which is criticism of their colleagues at work, much personal comment on the advanced rows of the audience. A French company is never afraid to let you know that, after all, it's only acting you're looking at. English downrightness would maintain the delusion at all costs. A lot of improvisation goes on--some by choice, some of necessity. French versatility flashes out brilliantly here and there with something that's not in the book; and when a fellow's memory fails he improvises with convincing readiness. There's no such thing as a breakdown, though _revue_ here runs for so long a season that actors might easily be forgiven for growing too stale to improvise. But that they avert by the habit of improvisation from choice.