IV INTRODUCTION

a reporter, and then a writer of frîvolous farces, with no other aîm than to amuse the frothy French populace. This remained for many years hîs sole purpose, as he produced plays with the rapidity of a Scribe and reaped the golden meed of a popular writer, until a peculiar expérience warned him that ail things hâve an end. He was one day visiting the composer who was to provide the music for one of his operettas, when he heard the latter refuse the door to poor old Scribe himself. "I don't want to work with his stuff," said the man of music, "the old fellow is played out." A little later, in the full tide of popularity, Labiche withdrew to his country estate and gave up writing, lest he too should one day find- himself "played out." Then came his friend Augier, and informed him that his farces were literature and must be published in a single collection. The idea that he was making " literature " seemed never to hâve occurred to the jovial playwright, but he agreed to the publication of a complète édition of his plays ; and the literary world has confirmed Augier's judgment. With ail his f antastic merriment — as utterly purposeless at first glance as that of our own Bill Nye, for example — he sees deeply, and portrays vividly. Like the writers mentioned above, he worked largely with others, although the play given in this volume was written by himself alone. His best-known comédies are "Un Chapeau de paille d'Italie" and "Le Voyage de M. Perrichon." His remarkable facility in the conception of comic situations has made him an inexhaustible mine for the lesser dramatic writers. The celebrated English farce " Box and Cox" is only an adaptation of one of his incidents. He was made a member of the Academy in 1880.

EmesUMarie d*Herviîîy^ bom in Paris in 1839, is one of the most versatile members of a versatile race. A civil