DEAR MISTER,--To you, who are a so great lover of the theatre, english and french, I send my impressions of the first of the new drama of Mister SARDOU. It is to you of to spread them in the country of the immortal SHIKSPIR. Allow that I render my homages to this name so illustrious, me who have essayed since so long time to speak and to write the language of that great author. And see there, in fine I can to do it! It wants me some words for to praise the put in scene of this new drama at the theatre of Mistress SARAH BERNHARDT. _Gismonda!_ It is magnificent! It is superb! It is a dream! Ah! if your SHIKSPIR could see this luxury of decorations, this all together so glorious! Him who had but a curtain and an etiquette! And MOLIÈRE? And RACINE? Could they make to fabricate of such edifices, of such trees, of such furniture? They had not these--how say you in english--"proprieties," which belong to the proprietor? Yes, I think that I have heard the phrase, "offend against the proprieties." We never offend against them in the theatres of Paris; they are always as it should be. But here, at the Renaissance, Mistress BERNHARDT has done still more. Each scenery is a picture of the most admirables, a veritable blow of the eye. [Illustration] I go to give you of them a short description. The first picture is the Acropolis, under the domination of the Florentines at the end of the fourteenth century. What perfume of poetry antique! What costumes! That has the air of an account of BOCCACCIO, of a picture of BOTTICELLI. One sees there the figures of ANGELICO, the colours of VERONESE. It is an ALMA-TEDDAMA of the middle age. And when Mistress BERNHARDT and her following, all resplendent of costume, are assembled upon the scene, one can see realised a group from the _Decameron_. And the second picture, and the third, and the fourth? Can I say more of them? They are superb. In the fourth there is a cypress high of six yards, there, alone, at the middle of the scene. One says he is natural. That may be. In any case he is marvellous. But the fifth picture, it is sublime! One cannot more! It is the last word of the modern theatre! It wants me the words, it wants me the place for to speak of it. SHIKSPIR alone would have could to render justice to this picture so ravishing.