Political feeling has often led to eccentric results on, and in front of, the French stage. With all the Imperial patronage of the drama, the public never lost an opportunity of laughing at the vices of the Imperial _régime_. When Ponsard’s ‘Lucréce’ was revived at the Odéon, the public were simply bored by Lucretia’s platitudes at home and the prosings of her husband in the camp. But when Brutus abused the Senate, and scathing sarcasm was flashed against the extravagance of the women of the court, and their costume, the pit especially, the house generally, burst forth into a shout of recognition and derision. It is to be observed that the acute Emperor himself often led the applause on passages which bore political allusions, and which denounced tyranny in supreme lords or in their subordinates. When the Emperor did not take the initiative, the people did. At the first representation of Augier’s ‘La Contagion,’ there was a satirical passage against England. The audience accepted it with laughter; but when the actor added: ‘After all, the English are our best friends, and are a free people!’ the phrase was received with a thundering _Bravo!_ from the famous Pipe-en-bois, who sat, wild and dishevelled, in the middle of the pit, and whose exclamation aroused tumultuous echoes. At another passage, ‘There comes a time when baffled truths are affirmed by thunder-claps!’ the audience tried to encore the phrase. M. Got was too well-trained an actor to be guilty of obeying, but the house shouted, ‘_Vivent les coups de tonnerre!_’ ‘Thunder-claps for ever!’ and the passive Cæsar looked cold and unmoved across that turbulent pit.