Sixty years later it went as hardly with Bordier, an actor of the Variétés, of whom I have heard old French players speak with great regard and admiration. He was on a provincial tour, when he talked so plainly at _tables d’hôte_ of the misery of the times and the prospects of the poor, that he was seized and tried at Rouen under a charge of fomenting insurrection in order to lower the price of corn. Just before his seizure he had played the principal part (L’Olive) in ‘Trick against Trick’ (_Ruses contre Ruses_), in which he had to exclaim gaily: ‘You will see that to settle this affair, I shall have to be hanged!’ And Bordier _was_ hanged, unjustly, at Rouen. He suffered with dignity, and a touch of stage humour. He had been used to play in Pompigny’s ‘Prince turned Sweep’ (_Ramoneur Prince_)--a piece in which Sloman used to keep the Coburg audience in a roar of delight. In the course of the piece, standing at the foot of a ladder, and doubtful as to whether he should ascend or not, he had to say: ‘Shall I go up or not?’ So, when he came to the foot of the lofty ladder leaning against the gigantic gallows in the market-place at Rouen, Bordier turned with a sad smile to the hangman and said: ‘Shall I go up or not?’ The hangman smiled too, but pointed the way that Bordier should go; and the wits of Rouen were soon singing of him in the spirit of the wits of Covent Garden singing of Coppinger: Mat did not go dead, like a sluggard to bed, But boldly, in his shoes, died of a noose That he found under Tyburn tree.