For many years the Théâtre des Variétés undertook to amuse the public with the lightest comedies, in which such actors as Brunet, Potier, Vernet, and Odry, such actresses as Flore and Jenny Vertpré appeared. After the Revolution of July, 1830, it made experiments in a more serious style, producing, for instance, the "Kean" of Dumas the elder, with Frédéric Lemaître in the principal character, and Bressant in the part of the Prince of Wales. Under the Second Empire the Variétés returned to its old trade, besides adopting an entirely new one--that of opera-bouffe, as cultivated by Offenbach. Here the earliest and best works of this master, such as "La belle Hélène" and the "Grand Duchess of Gerolstein," were first performed, with Schneider and Dupuis in the principal parts. Here, too, some of the best comedies of Meilhac, Halévy, and Labiche were brought out. The Boulevard Montmartre, in front of the Variétés, is the most animated part of the whole line of boulevards. The late Henri Dupin, the famous boulevardier, who died a centenarian, used to pretend that he had shot rabbits between the Rue Montmartre and the adjoining Rue Richelieu. This was doubtless an exaggeration. But a representation of this part of Paris, painted in the days of the First Empire, shows that at the point in question there were ditches intersecting a road lined with trees. The Boulevard Montmartre combines some of the features of the upper and of the lower boulevard, the shops which here abound offering for sale objects of use and of ornament, of interest and of luxury: clothes, bonnets, books, chocolate, bonbons, and music. [Illustration: BOULEVARD BONNE-NOUVELLE AND THE GYMNASE THEATRE.] At the corner of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Rue Vivienne stood the famous public gambling-house of Frascati, where, until the reign of Louis Philippe, as at a similar establishment in the Palais Royal, games of hazard were publicly played. These gambling-houses bore an important, and often, no doubt, disastrous part in the social life of the French capital, and innumerable anecdotes have been told of the sums lost and won within their walls.