With regard to similar stories related of the elder Booth, it is often said now-a-days that his audiences were not made up of the decorous class which attends theatres in _our_ times, and that managers of the present day would not for a moment tolerate such insolent violations of theatrical discipline. This may be possible as regards Booth, but so far as it relates to Lemaitre it affords no explanation of the anecdotes in question. For the severest theatrical audience that can be gathered in America to-day--at Wallack's, at Booth's, or wherever decorum is supposed to be most preserved--could not for a moment compare, in the severity of its artistic judgments and the sternness of its requirements, with the audiences which Lemaitre so boldly trifled with. And the fact illustrates, as nothing else could, the prodigious popularity of the man and the marvelous power of his art. At the _repetition generale_ of _Toussaint L'Ouverture_ the cream of artistic Paris was present. The members of the Comedie Francaise came in force; Lamartine occupied a stage-box; the house was full of poets, novelists, painters, artists and authors of every description. Yet on _this_ solemn night Lemaitre had one of his explosions of temper, and stopped the play to publicly scold the stage-carpenter for setting a scene wrong in some trifling detail. The incident was destructive to the power of the play, or would have been in an ordinary case; but before the evening was over Lemaitre regained perfect control of himself and swept his audience with him as by storm. Before passing his sixtieth year Lemaitre turned over a new leaf. He abandoned his dissipated habits and set to work to take care of his health and his morals. Better late than never. He had always borne a good reputation for generosity: he now set about winning one for virtue. He devoted himself to his children--of whom he had four--with exemplary care and solicitude. The Antinoeus of former days is now, as has been said, but a ruin, but what a magnificent ruin! He has no voice, but voice seems hardly necessary to him, so eloquent is his pantomime, so expressive are his features, so full of fire his great black eyes when acting. Several years ago, while still in his full vigor, he sustained a loss of his teeth, which temporarily destroyed his articulation. He was playing in a piece called _The Black Doctor_ at the time, and did not intermit his representations on account of his misfortune. But one who was present on the occasion relates that the audience heard him repeat again and again, in ever-varying tones, "Ellla marrr montaaat tojors" ("Et la mer montait toujours"--"And the sea still rose!"), and shuddered and sobbed under the pathos of his tones for more than twenty minutes without appearing to notice the absurdity of the language. And for fully fifteen years Frederic Lemaitre has now been playing without a voice.