Show OUR FRENCH LETTER < Special correspondence of the HERALD I PABIS September 19 1883 The peculiarity of foreign miuiter ChallemelIaeoar is that he can fall sick or feel the necessity for a short leave of absence at less than a moments mo-ments notice Having brought the Chinese question to the zenith of bungling he decamps But the able ambassador of the celestials retuem bera the ministerial tall talk and the treaty a la mode Bardo imposed on some successor of the late sovereign or Annam France will not send any expeditionary force to Tonquin to wfcip the Chinese the parliament would vote neither the money nor the men and the Chinese know this And China will concede all she is asked save her faulty rights over the Annamites and baying France for a direct and troublesome neighbor The theatrical Heasoa may be said to have commenced with the revival j i I of FrouFrou a fiveact i comedy by Vies era Meilhao and HaJ vy It i is II the most celebrated work of these tw 3 I famous dynamitists and a aerioua attempt tempt to catch the living manners as they rose of the last days of the second sec-ond Empire FrouFrou means tbs noise caused by the rustling of a silk I dress The plot is this and it will ba > seen to be a near relation of Madame Benoiton Brigard is a rich and accomplished ac-complished libertine aged 60 be baa two daughters Louise and Gilberte left to themselves and so they naturally natu-rally follow their own instincts I Louise is serious eenaible and divines di-vines life before experiencing iL Gil berte is light laughing fond of gay life a spoiled child an adorable doll with a roll of laoe for a heart and ends by loosing herself and soiling soil-ing her name Two neighbors solicit the hand of Gilberte Sartorya and Valreae The father deoidei for Bar toryp wlo is a serious reflecting man and who is loved in secret by Louiae The marriage accomplished the husband and wife as is usually the case in Paris follow their inclinations inclina-tions the husband to his afiaire the wife her pleasures Gilberte has received re-ceived the pet sobriquet of FrouFrou from the rustling of her silk dresses Four years are supposed to have elapsed a baby has been born and which instead of unriting baa rather separated the parents Louise who has sacrificed herself for her sister now comes to her aid to try and res tore harmony in the Sartcrys family But after inviting her sister to thus reside Gilberts becomes jealous of Louise A terrible scene ensues be twetn the sisters oni ends by Oil bertee eloping with Valreas who has never ceased his attention toward her Sartorys follows the fugitives to Venice and kills Yalreas in a duel Ultimately Gilberte returns dishonored dishon-ored and dying to her fathers where she djee The revival of Frou Frou ia remarkable re-markable because the difficult role has been filed by Sara Bernhardt the character was originally created by Mlle Deac6e but was at first destined des-tined for Mile Antonine who ought even now be taken as its beat interpreter inter-preter Sara Bernhardt has several times appeared as FrouFrou in ner starring tours but His cnly at present she has enabled Parisians to judge her And the verdict is a qualified one Sara gives us a tragic Frou Fiou what the lightheaded empty hearted Gilberte was not In the I death scene Sara makes FrjuFrous agony irresistibly tearful when the dying Gilberts calls her sister and makes her prom e to have her buried in a certain white ball robe of other dayp with flounces of small roses to make her look pretty and the old Fro Frou once again Madame Bernhardt u here faultiest but in the other sooner she forgets that Frou Frou is a thoughtless friveloai creature crea-ture not demanding to bg portrayed in tragic account and gestures Oc casionally Madame Bernhard works herself up into such a nervous passion pas-sion outhamlets Hamlet so as to bt perfectly inarticulate And M Marais who represents Sartorya presents I pre-sents us with an Othello or an Antony An-tony rather than a commonsense man of the world whose domestic I peace has been dishonored and destroyed des-troyed Sara Bernhardt has given usa us-a new FrouFrou dut opinion prefers the old one The administrator of the Union Generate Bank hava to make up collectively ani individually the total low of 20000000 francs and which falls on old royalist families The excitement isvery great in the Fau bourg St Germain and not a few members of the aristocracy will be reduced to beggary Some of Marshal Mar-shal MaoMabons relatives are hit hard Two of the adminieratora haying given all their property to the assignee have set out for Manitoba to oooupy farms purchased for them by friends The Duo De Brogliesson is resolved to go to New Zealand to remake re-make his fortune in woolgrowing though his wife is very wealthy the daughter of Say the sugar refiner Capital punishment was becoming eo rare in France that criminals viewed it as abolished Had the Wreteb Holfz who hasjusfc been executed exe-cuted at Rheimsfor the murder of an old farmer nnder circumstances of horrible infamy and brutality been reprieved honest people might despair I des-pair Holtz was a man cf Herculean Hercul-ean strength and passed his time since condemnation playing cards and sketching his intended farming operations m New Oaiendonia It was with great difficulty that he could be made to comprehend that the order for his execution was not a pardon He fainted away and became be-came almost an inert mass in which state he was decapitated His head on being taken from the basket displayed dis-played not the I slightest change in the featun B The c rowd of 6OCO pesosi and mostly women and children I biased the headsman because the i dead cart interfered with their view of the execution I I Critics seem to concentrate all their attention on the military forces II of France and hardly bestow a thought on her naval reorganization There is hardly a weAk but a respectable res-pectable addition is being made to the French navy and not a ship in the four chief dockyards but baa a keel laid down TheFrench fleet of the future aims to have fast sailing frigates carrying but few guns ano well providad wiib torpedo accessories The warm dlscatsion going on res Dectibg the progress made by the renonaTmy as tested at that annual an-nual examination autumn mat 03u vree is a little confoHed It is forgotten for-gotten hat in Franca the army is he nation and that since 1871 suc cessive war ministers have bseu try 1 lug their hobbies so that caparisoning caparison-ing has been mistaken for advanolcg After Jen it took Prussia nearly forty years andunder the direction of one master mind to secure the Prussian army its present perfection There are social and political considerations con-siderations which pi6an6 Franc even ttill from lopping off excresen 088 banging on the reorganization of the army Three elements of de tense she cozamande material money and trained soldier She hesitate toenconIm bmrBYBr iViwotift nf ini tiation among her officsrs 7 for the I curse of the oiantry is redtape and I aa to her power to mobilise an army I corps or a score of them that essential essen-tial element far A victorious opening of a campaign never baring bees tested caaaot be judged It may be presumed as inferior to the marvelous marvel-ous rapidity by which the Germans can mobolize their army On ths29lhof March 23H it was announced to the Parisians that Napoleon Na-poleon had gained several victories over the allies be sent in batches of prisoners to back up his assertions his journals urged children of twelve years of age to at night steal into i the stables wherever the cavalry of I the enemy was lodged and hough the i animals a patriotic infant could thus maim easily twenty horses The people peo-ple seemed to be intoxicated wiTh joy Bu th ey were equally EO two days later when on the 1st of April 1814 the allies entered Paris they threw themselves at the feet of the sovereigns sover-eigns of Russia and Prussia pressed their hands their knees and their clothes These two monarchs descended des-cended from their horses and kissed each other the crowds then cried vive Louis XVIII and white flags and white cockades appeared as if by magio At the opera the imperial arms over Napoleons were covered cov-ered with a white sheet Next day a scaffolding was being run up to demolish de-molish the Vend me column a work the communists succeeding in effecting effect-ing but that the allies ordered to be removed The Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings in the Palace of Industry a building at this season as cold as an icehouse and under the direct organization or-ganization ol the government includes in-cludes some 1700 exhibits the majority ma-jority already known and the select few famous Perhaps what strikes the visitor most is the richness and admirablebeauty of the decoration the Gohelein tapestry and Sevres vases EO harmoniously distributed from an exhibition in themselves The sculpture is exquisitely grouped not many novelties j there is a bust of Gluck a piece representing Mozart tuning his violin In pictures the popular artists contribute chiefly their known works and the new exhibits display no extraordinary I interest A second exhibition of fine arts in a year and especially in Autumn Au-tumn ii a mistake it is the more so when its character is retrospective only for three years Ten years lapsed would make one enjoy the eight of an old favorite Attention is drawn to the longevity of modern players they live as long as ether people if they have regular lives Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage is however more severely applied to modern artistes I do not see it mentioned that Lucefa Who entered on the Rom an atega very young acted during a whole century and made her positively last appearance appear-ance at the age of 112 years Galeria Oapiala dansesue appeared 80 years after her debut to compliment Porn pey and she was on the stage at the coronation of Augustus A beggar says he only wears his mahogany legs on Sundays and fee s tivals week dayshe wears ash Between gushing friends I have been married since four months Indeed and how many children have you |