The Sun. — 1864-03-29 (London, England)

SURKEY.  This theatre, in accordance with unvarying CuEr tom, presented its patrons with a novelty for their Paschal enterZainment, and in accordance also with their unvarying custom, the patrons of the theatre assembled in overflowing strength to welcome the novelty. Tee ardour of Surrey eudiencfs for the drama cannot be doubted, for none but the most devoted enthusiasts would undergo such bodily agonies, such physical pressure, as were endured last night for nearly six hours by the occupants of the pit and gallery of this theatre. While it cannot truthfully be said that they endured their sufferings uncomplainingly or unresistingly, yet it marked an advanced stage in civilisation to notice how much good humour and how little angry feeling was displayed among so vast a mass of persons. The novelty presented last evening bore the promising title of " The Soldier of Fortune, or the Devil's Death Tower," and was stated in the bills to be a translation from and adaptation of a French piece, by Mr. J. Anderson, one of the managers of the theatre. The story, as dramatised, although historical as history, as represented in Dumas's novel is exciting, and to a sensitive mind startling, if not revolting. Marguerite of Burgundy, the Queen of Louis X., during her husband's absence from Paris, indulges her and her sisters' guilty passions by receiving lovers in the Death Tower, on the banks of the Seine, and, at the conclusion of each evening's revel, their unfortunate paramours are assassinated, and their bodies cast into the river by a band of ruffians under the orders of one Guido Malatesta, a creature of Marguerite's, and ostensible keeper of an auberge adjoining the Tower. At this auberge meet Leander de la Croix, an orphan, who has come to Paris to his twin brother Lionel, who is Captain of the Queen's Body Guard, and high in Marguerite's favour, and one Captain Bertrand, the soldier of fortune. The latter opportunely interferes to save Leander from a cowardly attack by an envious Paris mob—a noble action, which elicited the loudest applause of the Surrey audience, probably because their English notions favoured the man who ventured to fight one against nine, as was the case in this instance. The two become intimate, and from their mutual confidences it appears that they have each received an assignation to meet an unknown lady that evening. Lionel, the captain, who appears, endeavours to dissuade his brother from keeping the appointment, but in vain. In the next scene, the circular room in the Devil's Tower, the Queen and her two sisters are seen masked and retiring from the tower ; but Lionel, after in vain essaying to obtain a glimpse of his fair companion's face, determines to insure recognition by puncturing the cheek with a silver pin. This act alarms and enrages the masked Queen, and she revokes some exceptional orders which she had previously given for the safety of the young man, and accordingly he and another victim are murdered, and their bodies cast into the river. Bertrand is more fortunate, for although doomed to the same fate he finds in Jacques Sangnoir, the chief assistant of Malatesta, an old comrade, who permits him to escape. In the second act Bertrand appears at the Queen's Court in the disguise of a Bohemian fortune-teller, and by his subtle hints so works upon Marguerite's tears that he extorts from her the promise to meet him at Malatesta's tavern. At the interview which there takes place Bertrand threatens to acquaint Lionel de la Croix with the fact that his brother had been assassinated by the Queen's order,to avert which disclosure Marguerite gives Bertrand a warrant appointing him chief minister of the realm, which she subsequently nullifies by another warrant for his arrest, which immediately takes place. He is visited in his prison by the Queen, who comes to gloat over his sufferings, and to taunt him with his prospective fate, but by a disclosure that he is her lover of past times, Bertrand de Longueville, the parent of the twin children and the murderer of her father, he