INTRODUCTION

Edouard Pailleron, poet and dramatic author, was bom in Paris, France, in 1834.

His life has passed quietly in the enjoyment of such affluence and leisure as leave the literary worker free to worship his ideals, and its literary successes offer almost the only landmarks for the biographer. It has been the fashion to speak of his earlier work as his best ; but the later, among which is Le Monde oU Von s* ennuie, has been more successful. The only genuine comedy of to-day is admittedly that of France, and of the many brilliant examples that her playwrights have produced during the last quarter of a century, few have had so remarkable a success before the Paris public as the one here offered.

People crowded eagerly to see it during the whole of its first season at the Français; and probably not since the first days of Beaumarchais's Manage de Figaro has there been found keener zest in fitting the humor of a play to contemporary society. M. Pailleron, in the preface to a later edition, disclaimed all intention of thus individually satirizing his countrymen ; but some of the portraits were so true to the supposed originals, that his disclaimer found an incredulous public.

The most conspicuous of these resemblances is that of Bellac to Caro, late Professor of Literature in the College