"THE NEW BOY."--Doing wonderfully well. "Going strong."--_White Lodge, Richmond._ * * * * * [Illustration: "VIVE LA RÉPUBLIQUE!" "THE TEAR THAT BRIMMETH, BLINDETH NOT HER EYE, SO FIXED ALOFT IT LOWERETH NOT TO GREET THE WRITHING REPTILE BRUISED BY HER UNFALTERING FEET!"] * * * * * GAIETY "SANS-GÊNE." _Madame Sans-Gêne_, represented by Madame RÉJANE, at the Gaiety Theatre, has made a decided hit. The plot of the piece by Messieurs SARDOU and MOREAU is poor, but it shows what an experienced dramatist can do with meagre materials and one strikingly good notion. It seems as if the plan of the play was started from the idea of an interview between the great NAPOLEON, when Emperor, with a washerwoman whose bill for washing and mending he, when only a poor lieutenant, had been unable to discharge. This scene is the scene _par excellence_ of the piece. It is here that both Madame RÉJANE and M. DUQUESNE are at their very best. Besides this, and the scene between _Napoléon_, _La Reine Caroline_, and _Madame de Bulow_, when there is a regular family row admirably acted by M. DUQUESNE, with the tongs, and Mlles. VERNEUIL and SUGER with their glib tongues, there is very little in the piece. M. CANDÉ, as the sergeant who rises to _Maréchal_, is very good, as is also M. LERAND, as _Fouché_. Madame RÉJANE is a thorough _comédienne_, but it is most unlikely (good as are historically the stories told about this same washerwoman elevated to the rank of Duchess) that she, in an interval of nineteen years--_i.e._, between 1792 and 1811--should not have been able to wear her costume with, at all events, some grace and dignity, and it is most improbable that the clever _blanchisseuse_ of 1792 should, in 1811, have found any difficulty in managing her Court costume without rendering herself outrageously ridiculous. All this hitching up of the dress and kicking out of the leg "goes" immensely with the audience; and this must be the _comédienne's_ excuse for overdoing the farcical business of her chief scenes, save the best of all, which, as I have already surmised, was the motive of the piece, namely, the scene with the Emperor in the Third Act. Here she is perfect, only just assuming so much of her old manner as would naturally come to her when chatting with "the little Corporal" over old times. [Illustration: Madame Sans-Gêne "going Nap."]