Mireille, Miss EAMES, charming throughout, is a happy peasant in beautiful little patent leather shoes, which, I hope, are as easy as apparently are her circumstances.  She is beloved by one Vincent, pronounced Van Song, a peasant of a rather Whitechapelish-costermongerish-out-on-a-Sunday appearance, but picturesque withal.  They are engaged; at least, if they are not they ought to be.  Then comes a handsome elderly lady, disguised like a fairy godmother in a pantomime before she throws off her hood and announces her real character, and this lady, called Taven in the bill, is Mlle. PASSAMA, who sings a song about a papillon, for what particular reason I do not know, except to please the audience, which it did, being encored, and to puzzle Mireille, in which it also succeeded, if I might judge by Miss EAMES’s expressive countenance.  And here I must observe that I found my intimate acquaintance with the French language almost useless, for except an occasional “oui,” given, as Jeames has it, “in excellent French,” and for some allusions to “le papillon” just mentioned, and “et alors”—­which didn’t help me much, even when given twice most dramatically by M. ISNARDON,—­I couldn’t catch a single word, and as far as libretto went, it might have been, for me personally, given in double-Dutch, or the dialect of a South-African tribe.

[Illustration:  The Wicked Vibrato Peasant with the big Toasting-cum-Tuning-Fork.]

On the disappearance of Taven,—­[she didn’t take off her cloak, and wasn’t a fairy, which rather put me off the scent, I admit,]—­in comes a gorgeous person, six feet high at least, and stout in proportion, who, as I gathered from the programme, was Ourrias (what a name!), played by Signor CESTE, and sung with a kind of double vibrato stop in his organ, which seemed, when turned on full, to make the upper boxes quiver.  Well, in he comes, and tells Mireille something—­what, I don’t know—­but this is how the row began, as, in less than five minutes, two old men, one M. ISNARDON, dramatic and in tune, and the other, not mentioned in my programme, and therefore pardonably somewhat out of tune, enter and commence a rumpus; what the difficulty was all about I am not clear, but the upshot was that the old man in tune cursed his daughter, and the old man out of tune held back his son VINCENT, and prevented him from first assaulting and then being assaulted by the irate Maitre Ramon, i.e., M. ISNARDON.  The Chorus of Unhappy Villagers forms tableau.  End of Act the Second; in Act the First there was no action at all, and everything had gone off as pleasantly as possible.

[Illustration:  The Happy Peasant Boy with his Long Pipe.]