One of the eccentricities of the modern French stage is the way in which it deals with the most delicate, or, rather, the most indelicate subjects and people. The indelicate people and subject may indeed be coarsely represented and outspoken, but they must observe certain recognised, though undefined rules. There must be an innocent young lady among the wicked people, and the lady (the _ingénue_) and her ingenuousness must be respected. One fly may taint a score of carcases and make a whole pot of ointment stink, but one _ingénue_ keeps a French piece of nastiness comparatively pure, and the public taste for the impure is satisfied with this little bit of sentimentality. The subjects which many French authors have brought on the stage do not, it is to be hoped, hold a true mirror up to French nature. If so, concubinage, adultery, and murder reign supreme. The changes have been rung so often on this triple theme that an anonymous writer has proposed that the theme should be represented, once for all, in something of the following form, and that dramatic authors should then turn to fresh woods and pastures new: ‘Scene.--A Drawing-room; a married lady is seated, her lover at her feet; the folding-door at back opens, and discovers husband with a double-barrelled revolver. He fires and kills married lady and her lover. Husband then advances and contemplates his victims. After a pause, he exclaims: “A thousand pardons! I have come to a room on the wrong flat!” Curtain slowly descends.’ This represents quite as faithfully the iniquities which, according to the modern French drama, prevail universally in society, as the dramas of Florian achieve the mission which was assigned to him of illustrating _les petites vertus de tous les jours_--the little virtues of everyday life.