"Il y a des beautes de jour et des beautes du soir; une peau brune, jaune, ou noire, devient blanche a eclat de la lumiere; les cheveux noirs reussissent mieux aussi au theatre que les cheveux blonds." But the times have changed; the arts of the theatrical toilet have no doubt advanced greatly.  On the stage now all complexions are brilliant, and light tresses are pronounced to be more admirable than dark.  Yet Dr. Veron was not without skill and learning on these curious matters.  He discourses learnedly in regard to the cosmetics of the theatre—­paint and powder, Indian ink and carmine, and the chemical preparations necessary for the due fabrication of eyebrows and lashes, for making the eyes look larger than life, for colouring the cheeks and lips, and whitening the nose and forehead.  And especially the manager took pride in the capillary artifices of his establishment, and employed an “artist in hair,” who held almost arrogant views of his professional acquirements.  “My claim to the grateful remembrance of posterity,” this superb coiffeur was wont to observe, “will consist in the fact that I made the wig in which Monsieur Talma performed his great part of Sylla!” The triumphs of the scene are necessarily short-lived; they exist only in the recollection of actual spectators, and these gradually dwindle and depart as Time goes and Death comes.  Nevertheless something of this wig-maker’s fame still survives, although Talma has been dead nearly half a century.

As Sylla, Talma was “made up” to resemble the first Napoleon.  Macready writes in his “Journal” of Talma’s appearance as Sylla:  “The toga sat upon him as if it had been his daily costume.  His coiffure might have been taken from an antique bust; but was in strict resemblance of Napoleon’s.  It was reported that several passages had been struck out of the text by the censor, under the apprehension of their application by the Parisians to the exiled Emperor; and an order was said to have been sent from the police forbidding Talma to cross his hands behind him, the ordinary habit of Napoleon.”  The tragedy of “Sylla” was written by M. Jouy, and was first performed at the Theatre Francais in 1822.

CHAPTER XXIV.

“ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS.”

It is clear that playgoers of the Shakespearean period dearly loved to see a battle represented upon the stage.  The great poet thoroughly understood his public, and how to gratify it.  In some fifteen of his plays he has introduced the encounter or the marshalling of hostile forces.  “Alarums and excursions” is with him a very frequent stage direction; and as much may be said of “they fight,” or “exeunt fighting.”  Combats and the clash of arms he obviously did not count as “inexplicable dumb show and noise.”  He was conscious, however, that the battles of the stage demanded a very large measure of faith on the part of the spectators.  Of necessity they were required to “make believe” a good deal.  In the prologue to “Henry V.” especial apology is advanced for the presumption of the dramatist in dealing with so comprehensive a subject; and indulgence is claimed for the unavoidable feebleness of the representation as compared with the force of the reality: