Never did actor play this part as superbly as you have done to-night--THAT I am bound to acknowledge--but this is too dear a price to pay for it." "Yes, wasn't I absurd in it ?" answered the baron bitterly.

"I felt myself supremely ridiculous throughout--but especially when my head went through the guitar with which Leander was belabouring me." "You certainly did put on the most comically furious airs imaginable," the tyrant replied, "and the whole audience was convulsed with laughter.
Even Mlle.

Yolande de Foix, that very great, and proud, and noble lady, condescended to smile.

I saw her myself." "It was a great honour for me assuredly," cried de Sigognac, with flaming cheeks, "to have been able to divert so great a lady." "Pardon me, my lord," said the tyrant, who perceived the painful flush that covered the baron's face, "I should have remembered that the success which is so prized by us poor comedians, actors by profession, cannot but be a matter of indifference to one of your lordship's rank." "You have not offended me, my good Herode," de Sigognac hastened to reply, holding out his hand to the honest tyrant with a genial smile, "whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.

But I could not help remembering that I had dreamed of and hoped for very different triumphs from this." Isabelle, who meantime had been dressing for the other piece, passed near de Sigognac just then, and gave him such an angelic look--so full of tenderness, sympathy, and passionate love--that he quite forgot the haughty Yolande, and felt really happy again.