The French public is cruel to its idols whose powers have passed away. The French stage is ungrateful to its old patrons who can no longer confer patronage. When the glorious three days of 1830 had overthrown the Bourbon Charles X., King of France and Navarre, and put in his place Louis Philippe, King of the French, and the ‘best of republics,’ the actors at the Odéon inaugurated their first representation under the ‘Revolution’ by acting Pichat’s tragedy of ‘William Tell’ and Molière’s ‘Tartuffe.’ All the actors were ignoble enough to associate themselves with the downfall of a dynasty many kings of which had been liberal benefactors of the drama. In ‘William Tell’ Ligier stooped to the anachronism of wearing a tri-coloured rosette on the buffskin tunic of Tell. In ‘Tartuffe’ all the actors and actresses but one wore the same sign of idiocy. Tartuffe himself wore the old white ribbon of the Bourbons, but only that the symbol which once was associated with much glory might be insulted in its adversity. Dorine, the servant, tore the white rosette from Tartuffe’s black coat amid a hurricane of applause from the hot-headed heroes of the barricades, who had by fire, sword, artillery, and much slaughter, set on the throne the ‘modern Ulysses.’ Eighteen years later, that Ulysses shared the fate of all French objects of idolatry, and was rudely tumbled down from his high estate. At the Porte St. Martin, Frederic Lemaître played a chiffonier in one of the dramas in which he was so popular. In his gutter-raking at night, after having tossed various objects over his shoulder into his basket, he drove his crook into some object which he held up for the whole house to behold. It was a battered kingly crown, and when, with a scornful chuckle, he flung it among the rags and bones in the basket on his back, the vast mob of spectators did not hiss him from the stage; they greeted the unworthy act by repeated salvoes of applause!