where, by all accounts, _l'exposition de la pièce selon la formule de M. Scribe_ is still unknown. How I used to enjoy these conversations! I remember how I used to stand on the pavement after having bid the old gentleman good-night, regretting I had not asked for some further explanation regarding _le mouvement Romantique_, or _la façon de M. Scribe de ménager la situation_. Why not write a comedy? So the thought came. I had never written anything save a few ill-spelt letters; but no matter. To find a plot was the first thing. Take Marshall for hero and Alice for heroine, surround them with the old gentlemen who dined at the _table d'hôte,_ flavour with the Italian countess who smoked cigars when there were not too many strangers present. After three weeks of industrious stirring, the ingredients did begin to simmer into something resembling a plot. Put it upon paper. Ah! there was my difficulty. I remembered suddenly that I had read "Cain," "Manfred," "The Cenci," as poems, without ever thinking of how the dialogue looked upon paper; besides, they were in blank verse. I hadn't a notion how prose dialogue would look upon paper. Shakespeare I had never opened; no instinctive want had urged me to read him. He had remained, therefore, unread, unlooked at. Should I buy a copy? No; the name repelled me--as all popular names repelled me. In preference I went to the Gymnase, and listened attentively to a comedy by M. Dumas _fils_. But strain my imagination as I would, I could not see the spoken words in their written form. Oh, for a look at the prompter's copy, the corner of which I could see when I leaned forward! At last I discovered in Galignani's library a copy of Leigh Hunt's edition of the old dramatists, and after a month's study of Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, I completed a comedy in three acts, which I entitled "Worldliness." It was, of course, very bad; but, if my memory serves me well, I do not think it was nearly so bad as might be imagined. No sooner was the last scene written than I started at once for London, confident I should find no difficulty in getting my play produced. IV Is it necessary to say that I did not find a manager to produce my play? A printer was more obtainable, and the correction of proofs amused me for a while. I wrote another play; and when the hieing after theatrical managers began to lose its attractiveness my thoughts reverted to France, which always haunted me; and which now possessed me as if with the sweet and magnetic influence of home. How important my absence from Paris seemed to me; and how Paris rushed into my eyes!--Paris--public ball-rooms, _cafés_, the models in the studio and the young girls painting, and Marshall, Alice and Julien. Marshall!--my thoughts pointed at him through the intervening streets and the endless procession of people coming and going.