Théodore and Rosette and I have great discussions on this subject: Rosette has but little relish for my system, she is for _true_ truth; Théodore would give the poet more latitude, and would not exclude conventional, optical truth.--For my part, I maintain that the field must be left absolutely free for the author and that the imagination must hold sovereign sway. Many of the guests based their arguments on the ground that plays of this sort were as a general rule outside of the ordinary stage conditions and could not be acted; I answered that that was true in one sense and false in another, just like everything else that people say, and that their ideas as to the possibilities and impossibilities of the stage seemed to me to lack exactness and to be based upon prejudices rather than arguments; and I said among other things that the play of _As You Like It_ was certainly capable of being performed, especially for society people who were not accustomed to other parts. That suggested the idea of acting it. The season is drawing on and all other forms of amusement are exhausted; we are weary of hunting, of riding and boating parties; the chances of boston, varied though they be, are not exciting enough to fill up the evening, and the proposition was received with universal enthusiasm. A young man who knows how to paint offered his services to paint the scenery; he is working at it now with much zeal, and in a few days it will be finished.--The stage is erected in the orangery, which is the largest apartment in the chateau, and I think everything will go off well. I am to play _Orlando_; Rosette was to be the _Rosalind_, as it was proper that she should be; as my mistress and the mistress of the house, the rôle was hers as of right; but she has refused to masquerade as a man, through some whim most extraordinary for her, for prudery certainly is not one of her faults. If I had not been sure of the contrary, I should have thought that her legs are not well formed. Actually not one of the ladies in the party would consent to seem less scrupulous than Rosette, and the play was very near falling through; but Théodore, who was to take the part of the melancholy _Jaques_, offered to take her place, inasmuch as _Rosalind_ is a man, almost all the time, except in the first act, when she is a woman, and with a little paint, a pair of corsets and a dress, he could carry out the deception well enough, having no beard as yet and being very slender in figure. We are now learning our parts and it is a curious thing to see us.--In every solitary nook in the park you are sure of finding some one, with a roll of paper in his hand, mumbling to himself, looking up at the sky, then suddenly lowering his eyes, and making the same gesture seven or eight times. Any one who didn't know that we were going to give a play would certainly take us for inmates of a lunatic asylum, or poets--which is almost a pleonasm.