In the drama of _Faust_ Lemaitre's genius took a new development in creating the part of Mephistopheles. The feature of the part which balked and baffled him was the infernal laugh indicated by Goethe. By every expedient that mimicry could suggest day after day he studied to give forth that terrible laugh, but all his efforts were useless: he could not satisfy his conception with his execution. Then the idea came into his head to abandon the laugh altogether, and substitute for it that diabolical grimace which every Mephisto of the grand opera in our day strives again to repeat. But, unless all testimony is to be utterly flouted, there has never since been seen a grimace so inexpressibly hideous and terrifying as that of Lemaitre. He practiced it before the glass for days, and at last, succeeding in a play of muscles which gave an expression to his face as sinister and frightful as he wished, he walked to the window of his room to try the effect of it upon the passers-by in the street. A woman who chanced to look up at him while he stood there grinning fell to the ground in a swoon. "Good!" said the artist, turning away from the window: "I have succeeded at last." It does not seem wonderful at the present day that Robert Macaire or Mephistopheles should be played in the manner which all play-goers are so familiar with, and recognize as the correct mode of embodying the part; but he who _creates_ the idea that is afterward accepted as a matter of course is a very different being from him who repeats it. In our day and country the actor who creates _one_ role in the way Lemaitre created a score is a made man in his profession. Jefferson created Rip Van Winkle--Sothern created Dundreary. But Lemaitre, in addition to the parts already named, created Ruy Blas, Don Caesar de Bazan, Gennaro, Corporal Cartouche, and a host of others familiar as household words to American play-goers through the grand army of his imitators who have played them since.