nature than Marguerite Gauthier she was far less interesting; and the picture of a fallen woman saved by an access of genuine feeling was much more agreeable than that of a degraded one dragging to his destruction a miserably weak man. The _Girls of Marble_ seemed, however, to M. Léon Laya too hard, too cold; and to show that women might lead irregular lives, and yet be kind and generous, he wrote _Les Cœurs d’Or_. Here two young women, attached by anti-matrimonial ties to two young men, find that they are preventing them from making suitable marriages in a decent sphere of life. The young men know what, in a worldly point of view, they ought to do, but are restrained by good feeling and the remembrance of past affection from doing it. The young women, however, resolve to sacrifice themselves. They take the initiative in breaking off the connection, and by doing so prove that they have “hearts of gold.” This sentimental piece, written in the style called “honnête,” did not meet with anything like the success of the highly emotional _Dame aux Camélias_, or of the cynical _Filles de Marbre_; nor did it close the stage discussion as to the goodness or badness of a particular class of women—a discussion which, indeed, might have been carried on for an indefinite time, seeing that the class in question comprises a great number of different specimens, from Cleopatra—that “reine entretenue,” as Heine called her—to the Esther of Balzac’s _Splendeurs et Misères d’une Courtisane_. Then arose the question—suggested, no doubt, by M. Laya’s _Cœurs d’Or_—whether a woman really possessing a heart of gold ought to be abandoned whenever it suited the convenience or the caprice of her lover to get rid of her. M. Léon Gozlan took one view of the matter and M. Emile Augier the other; the former developing his ideas on the subject in a single act, the latter in a full-sized drama. In Léon Gozlan’s charming little piece, _La Fin du Roman, ou Comment on se débarrasse d’une Maîtresse_, a young man is represented as so hopelessly attached to a young woman whom he has omitted to marry, that his friends, as “men of the world,” think it necessary to speak to him on the subject. The attachment has lasted a considerable time, and it is explained to him that it will be mere weakness on his part to allow it to continue any longer. He is invited to join a travelling party to Italy, and is mockingly told that he will want to bring his mistress with him. He repels the taunt, and, in response to the suggestion of one of his friends, makes a bet on the subject. The separation having been decided on, a division of household effects takes place. Difficulties arise about the appropriation of certain objects to which a sentimental interest belongs, and which each, from regard for the other, wishes to retain. A favorite dog is disputed for; and when it is arranged that he shall be the property of the one he goes to most