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The annals of the Faith possess few more moving testimonies to the sheer power of the spirit than the stories of courage and purity of heart emerging from the inferno that engulfed the friends in what was then Zaire, stories that will inspire generations to come and represent priceless contributions to the creation of a global Bahá’í culture.

Posterity has justified the poor comedian against the Hotel Rambouillet; amongst so many of Corneille's masterpieces it has ever given a place apart to Polyeucte; neither the Saint-Genest of Rotrou, nor the Zaire of Voltaire, in spite of their various beauties, have dethroned Polyeucte; in fame as well as in date it remains the first of the few pieces in which Christianism appeared, to gain applause, upon the French classic stage.

Now, the watercourse was there; its direction was northward, and it was possible that it emptied into the Zaire. In that case, instead of reaching St. Paul de Loanda, it would be at the mouth of the great river that Mrs. Weldon and her companions would arrive. This was not important, because help would not fail them in the colonies of Lower Guinea.

Yet he did not hesitate to steal Othello when he wanted to write Zaïre, or, rather, he went out on the boulevards, picked out the first good-looking barber he could find, dressed him up in Eastern garments, and then fancied that he had created a French Othello." "I saw Mounet-Sully at one of the performances of your Othello" I remarked.

Going slowly up stream a little more than two knots an hour, the Zaire was for once a pleasure steamer.

We were all eyes and ears in spite of that, and nothing in the play of the tragic actresses Madame Duchesnois, Madame Paradol, and Madame Bourgoin ever escaped us. I can see and hear yet all Corneille's plays, and Racine's too, and Zaire, and Mahomet, and L'Orphelin de la Chine, and many more. But what we longed for most impatiently were Moliere's plays.

In the evening he was present at the theater, and Zaire or Mahomet, I think, was played; but of course he understood none of it. In the month of November of this year, the First Consul returned to Boulogne to visit the fleet, and to review the troops who were already assembled in the camps provided for the army with which he proposed to descend on England.

Neither has Voltaire, in my opinion, succeeded much better in his Mahomet and Zaire; throughout we miss the glowing colouring of Oriental fancy.

Had Frederic been able to read Homer and Milton or even Virgil and Tasso, his admiration of the Henriade would prove that he was utterly destitute of the power of discerning what is excellent in art. Had he been familiar with Sophocles or Shakspeare, we should have expected him to appreciate Zaire more justly.

But this revelation of my strength rendered more painful to me the sort of farniente to which Perrin condemned me. In fact, after Zaire, I remained months without doing anything of importance, playing only now and again. Discouraged and disgusted with the theatre, my passion for sculpture increased.