Mr. LYN HARDING, as _Flambeau_, veteran of NAPOLEON'S Army, introduced a faint suggestion of badly-needed humour, and relieved the general atmosphere of Court artificiality by a touch of nature which almost reconciled us to the improbable burst of eloquence that ROSTAND, with his reckless prodigality, assigned to this rough soldier. Miss LETTICE FAIRFAX gave a pleasant air of irresponsibility to the shallow _Maria Louisa_, and made her bear very lightly her cross of widowhood (with bar). The briefest possible vision of Miss BETTY FAIRE as _Fanny Elssler_ made me want to see much more of her; but Mr. Louis PARKER had been Napoleonically ruthless with the text. His translation sounded well, though the delivery of it sometimes left me doubtful as to what was prose and what was verse. As for his production of the play, it showed the old skill of a Past-Master of Pageantry. Altogether Miss MARIE LÖHR has been justified of her courage. In a happy little speech from which we learnt that every one of the voices (off) in the Wagram scene was a demobilised voice from the fighting fronts, she told us that her revival of _L'Aiglon_ was intended as a tribute to Art after all these years of War. We were not, I think, meant to take this as a reflection upon the part played by the British Theatre in sustaining the nation's soul during the War. Anyhow, I for one shall read into her words just a brave promise--not, I hope, too sanguine--of what we may expect from the new birth of the Arts of Peace. O.S. * * * * * ANOTHER PENDING INDEMNITY. It has been said that the man who for his daily shave resorts habitually to a barber has already become a subject for a drastic moral operation. That may or may not be so, but having chambers in Ryder Street and Alphonse residing within the precincts of St. James's, I would rather have been carved morally into mincemeat than have robbed such an artist of his self-expression. That is how I felt about it in 1914 and in many preceding years, during which, under the magic spell of Alphonse, the razor fell upon my cheek like thistledown. Even to be lathered by him was an alluring form of hypnosis. Alphonse was a Hokusai of barbers, but he was also a true son of France; and there were Alsace and Lorraine and the arrogance of 1870 still to be accounted for. So Alphonse went, and in his place reigned Ferdinand. Ferdinand, what there was of him, was a good fellow. He was an old fire-eater. He had lost a leg in Algeria and an eye somewhere else, and he could not comprehend why such trivial matters should disqualify a man for killing pigs. He was, as I have said, a good fellow, but his methods of using a razor were mediaeval. However we were not long for one another, and, as the R.N.V.R. tolerate such things, I grew a beard, an equable, regulation torpedo beard.