And Lucien wrote his first newspaper article at the round table in Florine’s boudoir, by the light of the pink candles lighted by Matifat; before such a remarkable audience he was eager to show what he could do.

THE PANORAMA-DRAMATIQUE.

  First performance of the Alcalde in a Fix, an imbroglio in three
  acts.—­First appearance of Mademoiselle Florine.—­Mademoiselle
  Coralie.—­Vignol.

People are coming and going, walking and talking, everybody is looking for something, nobody finds anything.  General hubbub.  The Alcalde has lost his daughter and found his cap, but the cap does not fit; it must belong to some thief.  Where is the thief?  People walk and talk, and come and go more than ever.  Finally the Alcalde finds a man without his daughter, and his daughter without the man, which is satisfactory for the magistrate, but not for the audience.  Quiet being resorted, the Alcalde tries to examine the man.  Behold a venerable Alcalde, sitting in an Alcalde’s great armchair, arranging the sleeves of his Alcalde’s gown.  Only in Spain do Alcaldes cling to their enormous sleeves and wear plaited lawn ruffles about the magisterial throat, a good half of an Alcalde’s business on the stage in Paris.  This particular Alcalde, wheezing and waddling about like an asthmatic old man, is Vignol, on whom Potier’s mantle has fallen; a young actor who personates old age so admirably that the oldest men in the audience cannot help laughing.  With that quavering voice of his, that bald forehead, and those spindle shanks trembling under the weight of a senile frame, he may look forward to a long career of decrepitude.  There is something alarming about the young actor’s old age; he is so very old; you feel nervous lest senility should be infectious.  And what an admirable Alcalde he makes!  What a delightful, uneasy smile! what pompous stupidity! what wooden dignity! what judicial hesitation!  How well the man knows that black may be white, or white black!  How eminently well he is fitted to be Minister to a constitutional monarch!  The stranger answers every one of his inquiries by a question; Vignol retorts in such a fashion, that the person under examination elicits all the truth from the Alcalde.  This piece of pure comedy, with a breath of Moliere throughout, puts the house in good humor.  The people on the stage all seemed to understand what they were about, but I am quite unable to clear up the mystery, or to say wherein it lay; for the Alcalde’s daughter was there, personified by a living, breathing Andalusian, a Spaniard with a Spaniard’s eyes, a Spaniard’s complexion, a Spaniard’s gait and figure, a Spaniard from top to toe, with her poniard in her garter, love in her heart, and a cross on the ribbon about her neck.  When the act was over, and somebody asked me how the piece was going, I answered, “She wears scarlet stockings with green clocks to them; she has a little foot, no larger than that,