Sire, issue your commands that our plays, and ours alone, be played;--for we are the sole descendants of Corneille, and Molière and Racine, whilst these new-comers are but the bastards of Shakespeare and Goethe and Schiller!" How very logical! I was a bastard of Shakespeare, of Goethe and of Schiller, because I had just composed _Henri III._, a play so pre-eminently French, that, if it were open to any reproach, it would be that I had represented the manners of the end of the sixteenth century too faithfully. And as the thing really sounds incredible, we will place before our readers' own eyes the petition of these gentlemen:-- "SIRE,--The glory of letters is not the least brilliant among French glories, and the glory of our theatre is not the least brilliant of our literary glories. So thought your ancestors when they honoured the Théâtre-Français with a special protection; so thought Louis XIV., to whom it owed its first organisation. That regal protector of letters, persuaded that the _chefs d'œuvre_ which his reign had produced could not be represented too perfectly, decreed that the best actors who were scattered about in the various companies which the capital then possessed should be united into one company, to be called the Comedians in Ordinary to the King. He gave rules to this select company, granted them rights and, among others, the exclusive privilege of representing tragedy and high comedy; and he added to these favours that of endowment. His object in doing this, sire, as you are aware, was not solely to reward those actors who had the good fortune to please him, but also to encourage them in the exercise of an art which by its elevation should be in harmony with his royal spirit; also to perpetuate the prosperity of that art, and to establish a model theatre on a solid foundation, for both actors and authors. For a long while, the intentions of Louis XIV. were fulfilled by his successors, in whom there was no falling off, either in good taste or in generosity; the two arts that he loved, and to which the French stage owed its dignity and its superiority, have reigned there in almost undisputed sway. Such was the condition of things at the time of the decease of your august brother; why must it be confessed that it is no longer the same to-day? The death of the actor whose talents vied with those of the most perfect artist of any epoch, has brought about more than one injury to the noble art which he upheld. Whether from depravity of taste or from consciousness of their inability to take his place, certain associates of the Théâtre-Français have pretended that the method of art in which Talma excelled could no longer be beneficially carried on; they are seeking to exclude tragedy from the stage and to substitute for it plays composed