The Sun. — 1866-10-24 (London, England)

VAUDEVILLE. -" Le Fou d'en Face." Dr. Johnson, or some equally wordy-wise sage, said, or is said to have said, " Sir, if you marry a widow, make sure that her first husband was hanged." Widow Livia's first husband was not hanged, but Hector, who occupies the apartment above her, never heard the oracle of the great lexicographer. " Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,' and so being, we must hope for his own sake, already very foolish, his only resource is to be wise after folly's fashion. It can only be in consideration of this that the authors and the audience of the Vaudeville allow him to drill holes through her ceilings so that he can watch all her goings and comings. In England such shocking doings would be put down at once. Now, Madame Livia is very tired of her honourable state of widowhood, which it is always to be considered is the greatest compliment she could pay to Husband No. 1, and in this case No. 1 must have been a charming fellow, for not one of all the pretenders to her hand comes up to her ideal of what No. 2 should be. She has the worst of all the ills known to humanity, she is ennuyee. Her only amusement. is to watch the mopes and modes of a madman who lives on the other side of the street. Hector, who knows every movement she makes and hears every thought which she utters—for it seems that in France widows have a habit of thinking aloud--is at his wits' end for some means of introducing himself to the lady of his love. At last he hits upon the idea, and a very natural one for a man at his wits' end ; it is to force his way into herpresence in the character of a madman on the opposite side of the street. The stratagem succeeds of course, for otherwise the curtain must fall, and in his assumed character of the madness he makes her alternately laugh, cry, tremble, each and all in the most fascinating manner, and mot leaving her a moment for ennui. Finally he affects a lodgment in her heart by opening her cupboard and showing her a " pickpocket," which is the French for a burglar, concealed in it. Single ladies, I must make a parenthesis, this is the virtue of Judases. Having turned out the thief, who had certainly paid dearly enough for his evil intentions by having to listen to Hector's mad ravings, he falls at Madame Livia's feet, assures her that if he is mad it is only with love, and she who is evidently not less mad gives her hand. It is a mad farce,t an amusing one ; the plot is•old, but the dialogue is vivacious, and it will be often played as a lever de rideau. The maddest character in it is not the fou d'en face. Amßiciu.---Les Amours de Paris.—From the mad loves of the Vaudeville we must pass to the Parisian Loves of the Ambigu, which are both mad and bad. If the reader has ever attended a dramatic performance in China or Japan—the glorious days of the Sanscrit drama which last a week or more are, alas ! things of the past—he will understand the pleasure of seven acts which drag their slow length through six mortal hours. In China the play would hardly last longer, and at least there are the fresh air of the morning, the flowing tea, the two hours allowed for dinner about midday, the cool of the evening, to palliate the infliction. To analyse such a performance would only be wasted time. It begins with a suicide by drowning, ends with another by the rope, and is diversified by a murder by a shooting in the middle. The authors have kindly omitted poisoning out of regard to the feelings of their audience. But the piece is worth seeing to those whostudy human aberrations on philosophical principles.  . A