light, I could see at once that part of the classic convention which is hidden beneath the buffoonery of genius. At the Comédie-Française we are used to this, and do not notice it; but the people are not, and they are surprised. More than once have I observed that my neighbors, as at the People's Universities, were ill at ease at these plays, and saw the suspicion creep upon them that their bourgeois amusers were treating them like children in their endeavor to reach the level of that particular public. And this feeling spoiled all the pleasure—a real pleasure, of course, for who can resist the laughter of Molière?
If the people were to get nothing from Molière but the low comedy, he would not be worth while: they might perhaps profit by the language, but would remain untouched and unenlightened. I fear such is the case nowadays: the classical masterpieces of Molière leave them unmoved; I have seen them sit, politely bored, through a performance of Le Misanthrope—an admirable piece of salon psychology—or Les Femmes savantes, wherein comedy borrows some of the dignity and nobility of tragedy. I am aware that the production of Tartuffe at Ba-ta-clan in November, 1902, was a tremendous success; it was not, however, due to Molière, but to M. Combes, or his mouthpiece—the anti-clerical journalist who took it into his head to draw a parallel between the mishaps of Orgon, and the Congregations affair, and "in the person of Tar-
