a gentleman who is willing to discuss the problem of his wife’s virtue with a chance adorer.  But the cold Baronne herself is no commonplace person.  And Louise, the elder daughter of Froufrou, the one who had chosen the better part and had kept it by much self-sacrifice,—­she is a true woman.  Best, better even than Brigard, is Gilberte, nicknamed “Froufrou” from the rustling of her silks as she skips and scampers airily around.  Froufrou, when all is said, is a real creation, a revelation of Parisian femininity, a living thing, breathing the breath of life and tripping along lightly on her own little feet.  Marrying a reserved yet deeply-devoted husband because her sister bid her; taking into her home that sister, who had sacrificed her own love for the husband; seeing this sister straighten the household which she in her heedless seeking for idle amusement had not governed, then beginning to feel herself in danger and aware of a growing jealousy, senseless though it be, of the sister who has so innocently supplanted her by her hearth, and even with her child; making one effort to regain her place, and failing, as was inevitable,—­poor Froufrou takes the fatal plunge which will for ever and at once separate her from what was hers before.  What a fine scene is that at the end of the third act, in which Froufrou has worked herself almost to a frenzy, and, hopeless in her jealousy, gives up all to her sister and rushes from the house to the lover she scarcely cares for!  And how admirably does all that has gone before lead up to it!  These first three acts are a wonder of constructive art.  Of the rest of the play it is hard to speak so highly.  The change is rather sudden from the study of character in the first part to the demand in the last that if you have tears you must prepare to shed them now.  The brightness is quenched in gloom and despair.  Of a verity, frivolity may be fatal, and death may follow a liking for private theatricals and the other empty amusements of fashion; but is it worth while to break a butterfly on the wheel and to put a humming-bird to the question?  To say what fate shall be meted out to the woman taken in adultery is always a hard task for the dramatist.  Here the erring and erratic heroine comes home to be forgiven and to die, and so after the fresh and unforced painting of modern Parisian life we have a finish full of conventional pathos.  Well, death redeems all, and, as Pascal says, “the last act is always tragedy, whatever fine comedy there may have been in the rest of life.  We must all die alone.”

J. BRANDER MATTHEWS.

THE KING’S GIFTS.

  Cyrus the king in royal mood
  Portioned his gifts as seemed him good: 
  To Artabasus, proud to hold
  The priceless boon, a cup of gold—­
  A rare-wrought thing:  its jewelled brim
  Haloed a nectar sweet to him. 
  No flavor fine it seemed to miss;
  But when the king stooped down, a kiss