The house is shabby; the audience, as often as we have
been there, has been small; and in this great city, the capital of an
extensive, populous, and wealthy district we have witnessed acting so
wretched, as would disgrace the floor of a village barn. We have been
much surprised by seeing the performers repeatedly laugh in the face of
the spectators, a thing which I should least of all have expected in
France, where usually, in similar cases, the whole nation is tremblingly
alive to the slightest violations of decorum. And yet Corneille, the
father of the French drama, was born in this city: the scene that is
used for a curtain at the theatre bears his portrait, with the
inscription, "_P. Corneille, natif de Rouen_;" and his apotheosis is
painted upon the cieling. These recollections ought to tend to the
improvement of the drama. The portrait of the great tragedian is more
appropriate than the busts of Henry IVth and Louis XVIIIth, which occupy
opposite sides of the stage; the latter laurelled and flanked with small
white flags, whose staffs terminate in paper lilies.
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