“An adaptation from the French _Nos Intimes_—not over-moral, but fairly transmogrified from the original, and cleverly acted in the chief part—a woman whom, I doubt not, you, an _habituée_ of the drama, know very well, but quite new to me. Now she is married, but she was a sister of Robertson, the playwright. She had evidently studied in the French school. The whole was good and the theatre was ventilated; so I did not feel exhausted, and was rather amused, and shd. rather have enjoyed myself had not the bad news thrown its dark shadow over one’s haunted consciousness....” Mrs. Kendal’s training was, I fancy, entirely English, but her acting was on a level with the best of “the French school.” Disraeli was an old admirer of French acting, as we know from “Coningsby,” and I think it is pretty clear from the same source that he particularly liked Déjazet. For he had Déjazet in mind, I guess, in the member of Villebecque’s troop of French comedians engaged for the delectation of Lord Monmouth, “a lady of maturer years who performed the heroines, gay and graceful as May.” This was the lady, it will be remembered, who saved the situation when Mlle. Flora broke down. “The failure of Flora had given fresh animation to her perpetual liveliness. She seemed the very soul of elegant frolic. In the last scene she figured in male attire; and in air, fashion, and youth beat Villebecque out of the field. She looked younger than Coningsby when he went up to his grandpapa.” This is Déjazet to the life. The whole episode of the French players in “Coningsby” shows Disraeli as not only an experienced playgoer but a connoisseur of the theatre. His description of the company is deliciously knowing—from the young lady who played old woman’s parts, “nothing could be more garrulous and venerable,” and the old man who “was rather hard, but handy; could take anything either in the high serious or the low droll,” to the sentimental lover who “was rather too much bewigged, and spoke too much to the audience, a fault rare with the French; but this hero had a vague idea that he was ultimately destined to run off with a princess.”