primarily French at all except in his wit, the very quality which the author of the Namur Ode was least qualified to appreciate. Lesage, however, had not yet arrived at his apogee. Despite his theatrical successes he was never on very good terms with the players of the regular theatre, and a small piece--_Les Etrennes_--was refused by them at the beginning of 1708. The author took it back, set to work on it, and refashioned it into _Turcaret_, the best French comedy, beyond all doubt, of the eighteenth century, and probably the best of its kind to be found outside the covers of Molière's works. It is in connection with _Turcaret_, the success of which was very great, though the powerful class offended by it did not conceal their displeasure, that one of the few personal and characteristic anecdotes we possess of Lesage is told. He had been asked to read his play to a fashionable company at the Duchess of Bouillon's, and, being delayed by law business, was late. The Duchess--let it be remembered that it was some half-century before all Paris interested itself in the quarrel of two "miserable scribblers who live in garrets"--rebuked him with some asperity for keeping her an hour waiting. "Eh bien, Madame," replied the poet; "je vous ai fait perdre une heure, je vais vous en faire gagner deux;" and he put his manuscript in his pocket, and, resisting all entreaties, went away. The anecdote rests on the authority of Colle, who, in such a case, is fairly trustworthy, and it probably explains why Lesage's life was one of struggle. Though his independence was, most likely, natural and usual, it is said to have been made more touchy on this particular occasion by the fact that he had lost the case which had detained him. However this may be, his dissatisfaction with the _Maison de Molière_ soon assumed a still more active form, and for five-and-twenty years the best living comic dramatist of France gained his bread chiefly by writing for the stage of the _Foire_, the irregular but licensed booths set up during fair time. Lesage is said to have written no less than twenty-four farce-operettas, as they may perhaps best be termed, for these boards, and the number of his works for them alone, or in collaboration, is sometimes put at sixty-four and sometimes at a hundred and one. It was about the time that he took to this occupation, in which he was kept in company by not a few writers of talent, if not of genius, notably by Piron, that _Gil Blas_ appeared in 1715. This, his greatest work, was scarcely so popular as _Le Diable Boiteux_, and it was long before it was finished, while the number of editions during the thirty years of the author's life was by comparison surprisingly small. Among the few positive statements that we have about Lesage's literary gains is one to the effect that a hundred pistoles had been advanced to him as prepayment for the last volume several years before it was completed.