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On nearing the anchorage, the pretty little village of Anjer strikes the eye, its huts built in rows, and shaded by palms and other trees; the Dutch Resident's house, the fort, and the wharf, are all in view; and further back, about a mile from the sea, may be seen the tomb, erected by his shipmates, to the memory of Dr. , Assistant Surgeon of H. M. S. Alceste.

"Come, my dear Alceste, we are people of the world, let us act like such, whether we are here or elsewhere, it is of no import, I suppose, to the affair which interests you, and which now interests me extremely, since it is yours. Let us speak of this, and sincerely; I require it."

She meant Alceste. She meant that he was severe. She meant that she could deceive him. "Or could I not?" she thought, putting the poems of Donne back in the bookcase. "Jacob," she went on, going to the window and looking over the spotted flower-beds across the grass where the piebald cows grazed under beech trees, "Jacob would be shocked."

But we may go even farther, and maintain that there are faults at which we laugh, even though fully aware that they are serious, Harpagon's avarice, for instance. And then, we may as well confess though somewhat reluctantly that we laugh not only at the faults of our fellow-men, but also, at times, at their good qualities. We laugh at Alceste.

Characters he did not seek to draw, but he made a personage the medium of incarnating a quality. Harpagon is not a miser; he is Avarice speaking and doing. Alceste is not a person; he is Misanthropy personified. This fundamental exaggeration led to and facilitated the caricature of relations and juxtapositions.

Five years elapsed between the production of 'Orfeo' and of Gluck's next great opera, 'Alceste'; but that these years were not wasted is proved by the great advance which is perceptible in the score of the later work. The libretto of 'Alceste' is in many ways superior to that of 'Orfeo, and Gluck's share of the work shows an incontestable improvement upon anything he had yet done.

The lyric drama has dealt with the universal passion ever since the art-form was invented, but "Fidelio" is the only living opera which occurs to me now, except Gluck's "Orfeo" and "Alceste," which hymns the pure love of married lovers.

Singing as the attendant of Alceste, Dugazont had these words to give in her part: "Ah! comme faime la reine, comme faime ma maitresse!" She advanced close to the footlights, and turning her looks toward the royal box, and bowing low, sang the words: "Comme faime la reine, comme j'aime ma maitresse!"

Rousseau, in his letter to D'Alembert on the subject of the Misanthrope, discusses the character of Alceste, as though Moliere had put him forth for an absolute example of misanthropy; whereas Alceste is only a misanthrope of the circle he finds himself placed in: he has a touching faith in the virtue residing in the country, and a critical love of sweet simpleness.

But both the conception and the presentation of Alceste and of Tartuffe, of Celimene and Philaminte, are purely comic, addressed to the intellect: there is no humour in them, and they refresh the intellect they quicken to detect their comedy, by force of the contrast they offer between themselves and the wiser world about them; that is to say, society, or that assemblage of minds whereof the Comic spirit has its origin.