Frederic Lemaitre was born at Havre on the 21st of July, 1798, and had been on the stage thirty years at the time when Dickens saw him at the Ambigu. As he was at that time already nearly sixty years old, it is easy to believe what some have asserted, that his powers were beginning to wane. Seeing him, therefore, in the year 1874, at the age of seventy-six, still an actor of such fascination that I hardly know his equal in Paris, and reading Dickens's account of his acting at the age of fifty-eight, the most cautious critic may accept without modification the extravagant stories told of the power he had over his audience when he was still young. Similar stories are related of Edmund Kean, and the resemblance in the private characters of the two men is most striking. Lemaitre's father was an architect. There is nothing to show that the boy displayed extraordinary mimetic genius. He was already about twenty years old when his father, yielding to his wishes, and perceiving in him a certain taste for declamation, brought him to Paris that he might be educated for the stage. He was admitted to the Conservatoire[A] and began his studies. He was not a very brilliant student, though he was assiduous in his devotion to study. During his pupilage he secured his first engagement as an actor at a little theatre on the Boulevard du Crime, called the Varietes Amusantes--a theatre long since dead. They were playing a piece with three actors, called _Pyramus and Thisbe_. As in the Babylonian anecdote, the lovers of the play agreed to meet under a mulberry tree at some distance from the town. Thisbe, who arrived first, was surprised by a lion: she fled, and was about to hide when her veil fell, and the lion seized it and tossed it about in his bloody jaws. The lion was Frederic Lemaitre, who thus made his first appearance on any stage on all fours. One night the actor who played Pyramus got into a dispute in a neighboring cafe, and could not appear on account of the exceeding warmth of the discussion, which resulted in sending him home with a broken head. The manager was in a highly excited state of mind. "Who the devil will play my Pyramus?" he cried. Whereupon the lion, who was waiting on all fours to make his entrance, straightened himself, took off his head, and said, "I'll play it if you like."--"You?"--"I, who know the part."--"Well roared, lion!" quoth the manager: "I accept your offer." This was Lemaitre's first essay in a speaking part. It was greeted by the indulgent audience with cries of indignation, peltings of apples, insults, hisses, whatever could most energetically express disapprobation of the lion turned lover. The next night Lemaitre resumed his dramatic career as a wild beast.