It seems strange that in France, where the drama is cultivated with more interest and with more success than in any other country, actors and actresses should so long have been regarded as beyond the pale of Christianity. Happily, this is no longer the case. But the traditional view of the French Church in regard to actors and actresses was, until within a comparatively recent time, that they were, by the mere fact of exercising their profession, in the position of excommunicated persons. This is sufficiently shown not only by the case of Mlle. Clairon in connection with the Bastille, but also by the circumstances attending the burial of Molière in the seventeenth, of Adrienne Lecouvreur in the eighteenth, and of Mlle. Raucourt in the nineteenth century. Acting in _Le Malade Imaginaire_, Molière broke a blood-vessel, and was carried home to die. He was attended in his last moments by a priest of his acquaintance; he expired in presence of two nuns whom he frequently entertained, and who had come to visit him on that very day. Funeral rites were denied him, all the same, by the Archbishop of Paris; and when Mme. Molière appealed in person to Louis XIV., the king took offence at her audacious mode of address, and threw the whole responsibility on the Archbishop of Paris--to whom, nevertheless, he sent a private message. As a result of the king's interference--not a very authoritative one--a priest was allowed to accompany Molière's body to its otherwise unhonoured grave. The great comedy-writer was buried at midnight in unconsecrated ground; and of course, therefore, without any religious service. Adrienne Lecouvreur, who, more than a century after her death, was to be made the heroine of Scribe and Legouve's famous drama, is known to all playgoers as the life-long friend of Marshal Saxe, whom she furnished with money for his famous expedition to Courland. Voltaire entertained the greatest regard for her, and was never so happy as when he had persuaded her to undertake a part in one of his plays. Adrienne died in Voltaire's arms, and no sooner was she dead than public opinion accused her rival, the Duchess de Bouillon, of having poisoned her from jealousy and hatred; for the duchess had conceived a passion for Marshal Saxe to which that gallant warrior could not bring himself to respond. The clergy refused to bury Adrienne, as in the previous century they had refused to bury Molière. Her body was taken possession of by the police, who buried it at midnight, without witnesses, on the banks of the Seine. "In France," said Voltaire, "actresses are adored when they are beautiful, and thrown into the gutter when they are dead."