The French language from her lips is a divine dialect; it is stripped of its national and personal peculiarities, and becomes what any language must, moulded by such a genius, the pure music of the heart and soul.  I never could remember her tone in speaking any word; it was too perfect; you had received the thought quite direct.  Yet, had I never heard her speak a word, my mind would, be filled by her attitudes.  Nothing more graceful can be conceived, nor could the genius of sculpture surpass her management of the antique drapery.

She has no beauty except in the intellectual severity of her outline, and bears marks of age which will grow stronger every year, and make her ugly before long.  Still it will be a grandiose, gypsy, or rather Sibylline ugliness, well adapted to the expression of some tragic parts.  Only it seems as if she could not live long; she expends force enough upon a part to furnish out a dozen common lives.

Though the French tragedy is well acted throughout, yet unhappily there is no male actor now with a spark of fire, and these men seem the meanest pigmies by the side of Rachel;—­so on the scene, beside the tragedy intended by the author, you see also that common tragedy, a woman of genius who throws away her precious heart, lives and dies for one unworthy of her.  In parts this effect is productive of too much pain.  I saw Rachel one night with her brother and sister.  The sister imitated her so closely that you could not help seeing she had a manner, and an imitable manner.  Her brother was in the play her lover,—­a wretched automaton, and presenting the most unhappy family likeness to herself.  Since then I have hardly cared to go and see her.  We could wish with geniuses, as with the Phoenix, to see only one of the family at a time.

In the pathetic or sentimental drama Paris boasts another young actress, nearly as distinguished in that walk as Rachel in hers.  This is Rose Cheny, whom we saw in her ninety-eighth personation of Clarissa Harlowe, and afterward in Genevieve and the Protege sans le Savoir,—­a little piece written expressly for her by Scribe.  The “Miss Clarisse” of the French drama is a feeble and partial reproduction of the heroine of Richardson; indeed, the original in all its force of intellect and character would have been too much for the charming Rose Cheny, but to the purity and lovely tenderness of Clarissa she does full justice.  In the other characters she was the true French girl, full of grace and a mixture of naivete and cunning, sentiment and frivolity, that is winning and piquant, if not satisfying.  Only grief seems very strange to those bright eyes; we do not find that they can weep much and bear the light of day, and the inhaling of charcoal seems near at hand to their brightest pleasures.

At the other little theatres you see excellent acting, and a sparkle of wit unknown to the world out of France.  The little pieces in which all the leading topics of the day are reviewed are full of drolleries that make you laugh at each instant. Poudre-Colon is the only one of these I have seen; in this, among other jokes, Dumas, in the character of Monte-Christo and in a costume half Oriental, half juggler, is made to pass the other theatres in review while seeking candidates for his new one.