The last new vaudeville at the French Plays, Hermance, is
an exciting and amusing piece; but the serious interest is inferior to the comic, and the subordinate parts become principal owing to the talent of the per- formers. Madame Albert plays a lively buxom woman of the bourgeoisie, who has married her landlord, a rich uncouth " proprietor "—admirably personated by Cartigny. Madame Albert's showy style of dress—vulgarly fine but not absurd—and her free, bustling, impulsive manner, that is outré yet not absolutely vulgar—show how the peculiarities of a class may be exhibited with ludicrous effect without caricature. Cartiguy, by the dense look and slow awkward manner that he assumed, conveyed the idea of a rustic out of his element. His uneasiness at being pilloried in a satin stook, and fettered with tightly-strapped trousers, in which he walked as if he stood in stirrups—and the mixture of shrewdness and stupidity, of rudeness and shyness, characteristic of the purse-proud man abashed at his new position in society—were divertingly expressed, without buffoonery. M. Laferriere, Madame Martelleur, and Mademoiselle St. Marc, played the pathetic scenes very cleverly; and down to the footman—an uuimportant part, but played with tact and significance by M. Nareisse--the cast was ex- cellent. The pathos of the drama is not calculated to impress an English audience; and M. Laferriere showed that a deficiency of natural sensibility is one of the causes why his art is too apparent.
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