Paris has been moved by a horrible accident. The first
act of Mignon was being performed at the Opera Comique, on Wednes- day, when a curtain above the stage was discovered to be on fire. Whether it had been burned by a gas-jet, or was the centre of a volume of escaped gas, is not known ; but the flames spread with a rapidity which suggests the latter explanation. Within a few minutes, the upper part of the theatre was on fire, and the figurantee and supernumeraries located there for the most part perished. A few escaped by leaping from the windows, or walking along the cornice to the fire-escapes ; but dozens were burned or suffocated, nearly sixty bodies having been found, while as many more are still unaccounted for. The audience generally escaped, though a few perished in the galleries; but the inferior artists and servants of the theatre were huddled together in wooden lofts, some of them seven stories above the stage floor, from which escape was almost hopeless. The means of egress were most imperfect, and the staircases, one of them of wood, acted like chimneys, drawing up the smoke and flames. No especial blame is yet attached to any one, and the panic was less severe than is usual in such scenes ; but the building appears to have been a regular fire- trap. The neglect is inexcusable, for the theatre belongs to the State, and the responsible Minister of Arts, M. Berthelot, only a fortnight ago admitted his conviction that no theatre could be safe from fire.
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