Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

100FRENCH LANGUAGE IN RUSSIA.

given by this actor with a simplicity and a gusto which greatly pleased me, notwithstanding my recollections of the Gymnase. When a piece is really spirituelle, there are several styles of performing it. The works which are lost in foreign lands are those in which the author depends upon the actor for the spirit of his character; and this has not been done by Messieurs Mélesville and Duveyrier in the Michel Perrin of Madame de Bawr. I am ignorant how far the Russians understand our theatre: I do not put much faith in the pleasure which they assume the appearance of feeling on seeing the representations of French comedies; they have so fine a tact that they guess the fashion before it is proclaimed to them; this spares them the humiliation of owning that they follow it. The delicacy of their ear, and the varied inflections of the vowels, the multiplicity of the consonants, the numerous hissing sounds in which they are exercised in speaking their own tongue, accustom them from infancy to master all the difficulties of pronunciation. Those, even, who only know a few words of French, pronounce them as we do. This often deceives us : we imagine that they understand our language as well as they speak it, which is a great error. The small number who have travelled, or have been born in a rauk where education is necessarily carefully directed, alone understand the niceties of Parisian intellectual conversation. Our delicate strokes of wit are lost on the mass. TVe distrust other foreigners, because their accent of our language is disagreeable, and appears to us ridiculous; and yet, notwithstanding the labour with which they speak it, they understand us better and less superficially than