“I saw you in the boxes during the third and fourth acts,” he said, in his grand, high-tragedy manner. “You could scarcely have chosen your time better for forming a fair judgment of my Claude. I do not consider it one of my _great_ parts, though my friends are pleased to tell me that I have left William Charles Macready some distance behind in my rendering of that character. You were, no doubt, struck by some points which are not only new to the stage, but which go a step or two beyond the original meaning of the author. As, for instance, at the close of the third act, where, instead of the ordinary, ‘Ho, my mother!’--a mere commonplace summons to a parent who is desired to come downstairs--I have adopted the heavy sigh of despair: ‘Oh, my mother!’--expressive of Claude’s remorseful consciousness that he has disregarded the widow’s very sensible advice in the first act. This reading opens up--if I may be permitted to say so--long vistas of thought, and also gives an importance and an elevation to the character of the Widow Melnotte, for which the lady performing that part can scarcely be sufficiently grateful. ‘Oh, my mother! Oh, my second self, my guide, my counsellor, by whose sustaining wisdom I might have escaped my present degradation and despair!’ All that, I flatter myself, is implied in the sigh and the gesture which I introduce at this point. Subtle, is it not?” “Extremely subtle,” said Laurence; “you must have studied the German critics, Mr. de Mortemar? There is a profundity in your ideas that reminds me of Schlegel.” “No, sir; I have studied _this_,” replied the tragedian, thumping the breast of his green-cloth coat, whereon glittered the tin-foil crosses and spangled stars which the soldier of the Republic was supposed to have won for himself in Italy. “I have drawn my inspiration from my own heart, sir; and I am the less surprised when I find that the fire that burns _here_ is quick to kindle an electric spark in the breasts of other men. The people of Market Deeping will tell you who and what I am, sir, if you can take the trouble to interrogate them. There are some there, sir, who know what good acting is, and who know how to appreciate a great actor. In London, you seem not to want great actors. The age of your Garricks and your Kembles is past; and when new Garricks and Kembles arise, you shut the doors of your principal theatres in their faces, and do your best to ignore them, or to write them down in your newspapers. But this kind of thing cannot last for ever, sir. The voice of the mighty British public is clamorous for a great actor; and you, sir, garble and misrepresent the truth as you may, cannot long interpose yourself between that mighty public and that great actor. I am, of course, understood to speak in a broad and general sense, sir, and to mean no offence to you in person.”