Our next dramatic attempt came to a disastrous and premature end.  I do not know who suggested to us the witty and clever little play of “Roxelane;” the versification of the piece is extremely easy and graceful, and the preponderance of female characters and convenient Turkish costume, of turbans and caftans, and loose voluminous trousers, had appeared to us to combine various advantages for our purpose.  Mademoiselle Descuilles had consented to fill the part of Solyman, the magnificent and charming Sultan, and I was to be the saucy French heroine, “dont le nez en l’air semble narguer l’amour,” the semillante Roxelane.  We had already made good progress in the only difficulty our simple appreciation of matters dramatic presented to our imagination, the committing the words of our parts to memory, when Mrs. Rowden, from whom all our preparations on such occasions were kept sacredly secret, lighted upon the copy of the play, with all the MS. marks and directions for our better guidance in the performance; and great were our consternation, dismay, and disappointment when, with the offending pamphlet in her hand, she appeared in our midst and indignantly forbade the representation of any such piece, after the following ejaculatory fashion, and with an accent difficult to express by written signs:  “May, commang! may_de_mosels, je suis atonnay!  May! commang!  May_de_mosel Descuilles, je suis surprise!  Kesse ke say! vous per_ma_ttay may_de_mosels etre lay filles d’ung seraglio! je ne vou pau! je vous defang! je suis biang atonnay!” And so she departed, with our prompter’s copy, leaving us rather surprised, ourselves, at the unsuspected horror we had been about to perpetrate, and Mademoiselle Descuilles shrugging her shoulders and smiling, and not probably quite convinced of the criminality of a piece of which the heroine, a pretty Frenchwoman, revolutionizes the Ottoman Empire by inducing her Mohammedan lover to dismiss his harem and confine his affections to her, whom he is supposed to marry after the most orthodox fashion possible in those parts.

Our dramatic ardor was considerably damped by this event, and when next it revived our choice could not be accused of levity.  Our aim was infinitely more ambitious, and our task more arduous.  Racine’s “Andromaque” was selected for our next essay in acting, and was, I suppose, pronounced unobjectionable by the higher authorities.  Here, however, our mainstay and support, Mademoiselle Descuilles, interposed a very peculiar difficulty.  She had very good-naturedly learned the part of Solyman, in the other piece, for us, and whether she resented the useless trouble she had had on that occasion, or disliked that of committing several hundred of Racine’s majestic verses to memory, I know not; but she declared that she would only act the part of Pyrrhus, which we wished her to fill, if we would read it aloud to her till she knew it, while she worked at her needle.  Of course we had to accept any condition she chose to impose upon us, and so we all took it by turns, whenever we saw her industrious fingers flying through their never-ending task, to seize up Racine and begin pouring her part into her ears.  She actually learned it so, and our principal difficulty after so teaching her was to avoid mixing up the part of Pyrrhus, which we had acquired by the same process, with every other part in the play.