Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
It would be too long and tedious to follow our comedians, step by step, on their way up to Paris, the great capital. No adventures worthy of being recorded here befell them; as they were in good circumstances financially, they could travel rapidly and comfortably, and were not again subjected to such hardships and annoyances as they had endured in the earlier stages of their long journey.
The King was the most polite man in his kingdom, but his son and his grandchildren were the most rude. In his youth he had played in the comedy of 'Les Visionnaires', which he knew by heart, and in which he acted better than the comedians. He did not know a note of music; but his ear was so correct that he could play in a masterly style on the guitar, and execute whatever he chose.
I enjoyed nothing more than these performances; and my mother, who witnessed several of them during one of her visits, afterwards said that it was surprising how well we had managed the affair and acted our parts. For a long time I was the moving spirit in this play, and we had no lack of talented mimes, personators of sentimental heroes, and droll comedians.
It was this that caused Madame Cornuel to remark, "The pulpit is in want of comedians; they work wonders there!" The King Alters His Opinion about Madame Scarron. He Wants Her to Assume Another Name. He Gives Her the Maintenon Estates. She and Madame de Montespan Visit These. A Strange Story.
That trip cost him, or rather cost France, five millions of francs. He always took with him all that could contribute to the amusement of the foreign ambassadors and of his numerous court. He was followed by the French and the Italian comedians, and by the actors and actresses of the opera.
But though licensed and protected in honour of their tuneful art, the wandering minstrels, male or female, like similar ministers to the public amusement, the itinerant musicians, for instance, and strolling comedians of our own day, led a life too irregular and precarious to be accounted a creditable part of society.
He had been a wealthy man, but at the time of our story, was in reduced circumstances, and was traveling about Saxony at the head of a troupe of theatrical folk, called "Weber's Company of Comedians." Little Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst, to give his full name, was born December 18, 1786, at Eutin, a little town in Lower Saxony.
Why should we not forget the whips and scorns for a while, and fleet the time carelessly, "as they did in the golden age?" Such simple fooling goes better with the irresponsibility of our fate than the more pungent wit of the moral comedians.
Three other pictures at Hertford House are equally delightful examples of another class of subject, namely groups of figures dressed in the parts of actors in Italian comedy. From a note in the Catalogue we learn that a company of Italian comedians were in Paris in the sixteenth century, but were banished by Louis Quatorze in 1697 for a supposed affront to Madame de Maintenon.
No wonder they liked him; and even the padre, who perforce had to knit his brows once or twice, looked regretful when the last encore was over. Taff Williams's song was succeeded by a duet. The singers were also comedians, but of a different calibre. Some odd freak of Nature had fashioned them both astoundingly alike in face and frame.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking