At the Metastasio Theatre there was a French vaudeville company, passably good, attended by a French audience, the majority officers and soldiers. Here were presented such attractive plays as _La Femme qui Mord_, or 'The Woman who Bites;' _Sullivan_, the hero of which gets _bien gris_, very gray, that is, blue, that is, very tipsy, and at the close, astonishes the audience with the moral: To get tight is human! _Dalilah_, etc., etc. The French are not very well beloved by the Romans pure and simple; it is not astonishing, therefore, that their language should be laughed at. One morning Rome woke up to find placards all over the city, headed: FRENCH TAUGHT IN THIRTY-SIX LESSONS! Apply to Monsieur SO-AND-SO. A few days afterward appeared a fearful wood-cut, the head of a jackass, with his tongue hanging down several inches, and under it, these words, in Italian: 'The only tongue yet learnt in less than thirty-six lessons!' Caper, seated one night in the parquette of the Metastasio, had at his side a French infantry soldier. In conversation he asked him: 'How long have you been in Rome?' 'Three years, _Mossu_.' 'Wouldn't you like to return to France?' 'Not at all.' 'Why not?' 'Wine is cheap, here, tobacco not dear, the ladies are extremely kind: _voila tout!_' 'You have all these in France.' '_Oui, Mossu!_ but when I return there I shall be a farmer again; and it's a frightful fact that you may plow your heart out without turning up but a very small quantity of these articles there!' French soldiers still protect Rome--and 'these articles there.' THE BEARDS OF ART. 'Can you tell me,' said Uncle Bill Browne to Rocjean, with the air of a man about to ask a hard conundrum, 'why beards, long hair, and art, always go together?' 'Of course, art draws out beards along with talent; paints and bristles must go together; but high-art drives the hair of the head in, and clinches it. Among artists first and last there have been men with giant minds, and they have known it was their duty to show their mental power: the beard is the index.' 'But the beard points downward,' suggested Caper, 'and not upward.' 'That depends----' 'On _pomade Hongroise_--or beeswax,' interrupted Caper. 'Exactly; but let me answer Uncle Bill. To begin, we may safely assert that an artist's life--here in Rome, for instance--is about as independent a one as society will tolerate; its laws, as to shaving especially, he ignores, and caring very little for the Rules of the Toilette, as duly published by the--_bon ton_ journals, uses his razor for mending lead-pencils, and permits his beard to enjoy long vacation rambles. Again: those who first set the example of long beards, Leonardo da Vinci, for example, who painted his own portrait with a full beard a foot long, were men who moved from principle, and I have the belief that were Leonardo alive to-day, he would say: