The limitation of violent effort in this play made him very “easy” in it. In one scene only does such occur; that at the end of the fourth act as originally played. Of late years he played it in four acts altogether, amalgamating the first and second acts with much benefit to the play. Only once have I seen him put out at anything during the playing of _Louis XI._ It was in Chicago on the night of Saturday, February 13, 1904. For five weeks following the burning of the Iroquois Theatre in that city no theatre had been allowed to open. The official world, which had itself been gravely in fault in allowing the theatre to be opened before it had been tested, tried to show their integrity by imposing rigid perfection—after the event—on other people. The Illinois Theatre, where we were to play, was the first theatre opened, and naturally we had to stand the brunt of official over-zeal. We had been harassed beyond belief from the moment we entered the theatre. On the night of _Louis XI._ all went well till the end of the bedroom scene between the King and Nemours. Here, when the Duke had escaped, the King calls for aid and his guards rush in with torches, and by their master’s direction search the room for his enemy. The effectiveness of the scene depends on the light thus introduced, for the scene is a dark one, lit only by the King’s chamber-lamp. To Irving’s dismay the cue for the lights was not answered. True, the guards came on, but in darkness. The firemen in the wings had seized from the guards the spirit torches— implements carefully made to obviate any possible danger from fire and each carried by one of our men practised in the handling of them. After a night or two matters got a little easier. The fire regulations, which directed that the men of that department on the stage should make requisition to the responsible manager who would see them carried out, began to be more decorously observed. IV _The Lyons Mail_ is the especial title of Charles Reade’s version of _Le Courier de Lyons_. The play has often been done in its older form but in the newer only by Charles Kean and Henry Irving. Indeed when Irving took it in hand he got Reade to make some changes, especially in the second act, where Joseph Lesurques has the interview with his father, who believes that he is guilty and that he saw him fire the shot by which he himself was wounded.