It is well known that many persons who scrupulously refrain from perusing Lord Byron's _Don Juan_, yet enjoy witnessing Mozart's opera of _Don Giovanni_, following the libretto with assiduity, and laughing with special heartiness at Leporello's song as it rehearses the adventures of his master. In the same way, many who are rather shocked at _Camille_, find no trouble in listening to _La Traviata_, and weep for the woes of _Favorita_ when that opera thrown into the form of an English novel excites their censure or disgust. The fact is, that the Italian language, like the cloak of charity, covereth a multitude of sins. Never did it cover them more strikingly than in an instance recounted by _L'Eclipse_. The present French government, according to that paper, lately prohibited the theatre of La Porte Saint-Martin from playing _Le Roi s'amuse_ of Victor Hugo, a piece familiar to Frenchmen in its reading edition for two-score years. The edict seems to have been rather arbitrary, since, whatever its morality, at least the play could give no political offence, there being but the remotest kind of comparison possible between the court of Francis I. and the government of Marshal MacMahon. But be this as it may, on the very day after its prohibition of _Le Roi s'amuse_ the government inserted in its budget a subvention of a hundred thousand francs for the Theatre Italien, whose favorite performance is _Rigoletto_. Now, _Rigoletto_ is only a bad Italian translation of _Le Roi s'amuse_; so that the droll spectacle was offered of the government prohibiting one theatre, at a great loss, from playing the very same piece which next day it offered another theatre twenty thousand dollars for playing in Italian! The _Eclipse_ satirically suggests that the secret must be that "entrer par la fenetre" becomes harmless as _entrare per la finestra_, and "donner la main" is innocent as "_donare la mano_" and that Italian purifies everything. If this be so, could not the Paris journalists borrow a useful hint from the affair, and avoid suspension by the government through the simple device of turning into Italian verses, of the operatic sort, those passages of the editorial articles which if printed in French would provoke the censor's ire? * * * * *