“Madame, I come here to learn rather than to teach,” replied the man of science with the gallantry of his threescore years and ten; “but, since you do me the honor to ask my opinion, I confess that it has the good grace to agree with your own. The people were imbued with the belief that to breathe the infected atmosphere was to die. The Empress, of her own free impulse, came boldly into the midst of it, stood among the dying and the dead, breathed long draughts of contagion, and did not die. Therefore contagion is a fallacy, and panic, instead of killing, is forthwith killed.” “Your therefore, monsieur, is admirable,” said the Princess de M----, tapping her parasol on the arm of her chair. “Now, let us have a truce of the plague, and talk of something else.” “Yes,” said Berthe, “or else talking may raise a panic, and we shall all catch it. Have you been lately to the theatre, monsieur?” “I went last night to see _La Beauté du Diable_,” replied the philosopher. “Ah! And what did you think of it?” “I think, madame--_que la France est bien malade_,” said the old man gravely. “One need not be _un des quarante_ to find that out,” remarked the Deputy de la Gauche with a sneer. “Is it so very bad?” inquired Berthe, turning a deaf ear to the uncivil commentary. “It is so bad,” replied the academician, “that, if I had not seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I could not have believed that the French drama and the French public could have fallen so low. I asked myself whether I was in Paris or in Sodom. From first to last the piece is a tissue of license and blasphemy, for which I could find no parallel, even approximately, in the most ribald productions of ancient or modern literature.” “Dear me!” exclaimed Berthe, “you quite horrify me. Why, we had just arranged a _partie fine_ to go and see it!” “Take an old man’s advice, madame--don’t go,” said the academician impressively. “It all depends,” said the Princess de M----, twirling her parasol, and lolling back in the luxurious _fauteuil_, “if one is prepared to risk it. I am for my part!” The philosopher bowed to the lady, but offered no comment. “Why does the Censure permit such bad comedies to be played?” asked Madame de Beaucœur. “I thought the reason for its existence was the protection of the public morals?” “Political morals rather, madame,” corrected the Deputy de la Gauche, with an air of mock solemnity, “and it is most conscientious in the discharge of that duty. An irreverent insinuation against the government suffices to bring down anathemas on a comedy or a drama from which no amount of talent can redeem it. My friend Henri ---- has just had a _chef-d’œuvre_, the result of a whole year’s labor, rejected on the plea that some odd passages, which cannot be removed without changing the whole plan, might be construed by sensitive Imperialists into a hit at the dynasty.”