I ask myself whether such sightseeing is all that, in coming hither, they wish to accomplish.  Intelligent travellers—­and, as a rule, it is the intelligent class that feels the need of the educative influence of travel—­look at our beautiful monuments, wander through the streets and squares among the crowds that fill them, and, observing them, I ask myself again:  Do not such people desire to study at closer range these persons who elbow them as they pass; do they not wish to enter the houses of which they see but the facades; do they not wish to know how Parisians live and speak and act by their firesides?  But time, alas! is lacking for the formation of those intimate friendships which would bring this knowledge within their grasp.  French homes are rarely open to birds of passage, and visitors leave us with regret that they have not been able to see more than the surface of our civilization or to recognize by experience the note of our inner home life.

How, then, shall this void be filled?  Speaking in the first person, the simplest means appears to be to study those whose profession it is to describe the society of the time, and primarily, therefore, the works of dramatic writers, who are supposed to draw a faithful picture of it.  So we go to the theatre, and usually derive keen pleasure therefrom.  But is pleasure all that we expect to find?  What we should look for above everything in a comedy or a drama is a representation, exact as possible, of the manners and characters of the dramatis persona of the play; and perhaps the conditions under which the play was written do not allow such representation.  The exact and studied portrayal of a character demands from the author long preparation, and cannot be accomplished in a few hours.  From, the first scene to the last, each tale must be posed in the author’s mind exactly as it will be proved to be at the end.  It is the author’s aim and mission to place completely before his audience the souls of the “agonists” laying bare the complications of motive, and throwing into relief the delicate shades of motive that sway them.  Often, too, the play is produced before a numerous audience—­an audience often distrait, always pressed for time, and impatient of the least delay.  Again, the public in general require that they shall be able to understand without difficulty, and at first thought, the characters the author seeks to present, making it necessary that these characters be depicted from their most salient sides—­which are too often vulgar and unattractive.

In our comedies and dramas it is not the individual that is drawn, but the type.  Where the individual alone is real, the type is a myth of the imagination—­a pure invention.  And invention is the mainspring of the theatre, which rests purely upon illusion, and does not please us unless it begins by deceiving us.