Cibber contrasts French and English audiences to the disadvantage of the latter; but I think he is wrong in his conclusions. "At the tragedy of 'Zaire,'" he says, "while the celebrated Mdlle. Gossin was delivering a soliloquy, a gentleman was seized with a sudden fit of coughing, which gave the actress some surprise and interruption, and, his fit increasing, she was forced to stand silent so long that it drew the eyes of the uneasy audience upon him; when a French gentleman, leaning forward to him, asked him if this actress had given him any particular offence, that he took so public an occasion to resent it? The English gentleman, in the utmost surprise, assured him, so far from it, that he was a particular admirer of her performance; that his malady was his real misfortune, and that if he apprehended any return of it, he would rather quit his seat than disoblige either the actor or the audience." Colley adds, that he had seen this "publick decency" of the French theatre carried so far "that a gentleman in their _Second Loge_, or Middle Gallery, being observed to sit forward himself, while a lady sat behind him, a loud number of voices called out to him from the pit--_Place à la Dame! Place à la Dame!_ when the person so offending, either not apprehending the meaning of the clamour, or possibly being some John Trot, who feared no man alive, the noise was continued for several minutes; nor were the actors, though ready on the stage, suffered to begin the play till this unbred person was laughed out of his seat, and had placed the lady before him." This, however, was but the mere arrogance of the pit, towards which, had the lady stood for a moment, with her back turned, the polite gentlemen there would have roared lustily, as under similar circumstances they do at the present time, "_Face au parterre!_" And as for the tenderness of the old French audiences for their actors, I have already given some taste of its quality, and have only to add here, that the French magistrates were once compelled to issue a decree wherein "Every person is prohibited from doing any violence in the Theatre de Bourgogne, in Paris, during the time any piece is performing, as likewise from _throwing stones_, dust, or anything which may put the audience into an uproar, or create any tumult."