“The first act has been in progress for five minutes. You will follow it directly. A former mistress of the Duke’s is trying to make the Duchess jealous. Was I lying to you when I said that little Favier is pretty? She has caught sight of me. Fortunately she has nothing to say for a minute or two, or she would have forgotten her lines. She is looking at you. You interest her. She knows the three or four friends I usually bring. Now hear her speak. Is not the timbre, the music of her voice, exquisite? Listen to what she is saying.” I have heard _La Duchesse Blue_ many times since till I know by heart every phrase. It is a fine delicate play in spite of the affectation of the title. It contains an extremely good study of a rare but very human jealousy. It is the story of a friend who is amorous of his friend’s wife, and who remains faithful to his friendship in his love. He never mentioned his feelings to the woman. He has never admitted it to himself, and he cannot bear any one else to pay court to this young woman. He ends by saving her from a irreparable mistake, without her knowing the reason or who he is. The first scene in which the childish Duchess confides in her husband’s former mistress, without suspecting the recollections she is awakening by the avowal of her own joys, is a marvel of moving, vibrating analysis, which might be called tenderly cruel. This play is a little masterpiece of to-day by Marivaux—a Marivaux whose airy gaiety would be like lace upon a wound. But I did not perceive the real value of the comedy on this first evening; although Molan was present to comment upon its smallest details. The painter in me was too keenly attracted by the extraordinary appearance of this Camille Favier, whom my friend had so carelessly called his mistress. The box being almost on the stage allowed me to follow the smallest movements of her face, her most furtive winks, and the most rapid knitting of her brows. I could see the layers of cream and rouge unequally distributed on her face, and the lengthening of her lashes with black crayon. Even made up in this way she realized in an extraordinary way the ideal type created by the most refined English artists: Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris. Her fine features were almost too slight for the perspective of the stage. Her large, slightly convex forehead seemed clouded with dreams. The elongated oval of her face made her smile float into her cheeks. Her straight nose, rather short, ennobled her profile. Her full lips drooped at the corners and were at the same time sad and sensual, voluptuous, and bitter. This make up even gave to her beauty a particular charm, which touched me strangely in its mixture of the real and the artificial. Her rosy cheeks were visible through her rouge, the fringe of her long lashes beneath the crayon, the fresh purple of her lips through the carmine, just as in her playing of the part she represented; a true, sincere and tender