CHAPTER II

Oudard transmits to me the desires of the Duc d'Orléans--I am appointed assistant librarian--How this saved His Highness four hundred francs--Rivalry with Casimir Delavigne--Petition of the Classical School against Romantic productions--Letter of support from Mademoiselle Duchesnois--A fantastic dance--The person who called Racine a _blackguard_--Fine indignation of the _Constitutionnel_--First representation of _Marino Faliero_

It will be remembered that, during the brief conversation which I had the honour of holding with M. le Duc d'Orléans in his private box, he had expressed the desire to keep me near him. I had no motive, now I had gained my liberty of action, for leaving the man who, at any rate, had assured me a living for six years and had allowed me to continue my studies and to become what I was. Moreover, at that time, M. le Duc d'Orléans was a typical representative of that Opposition party to which I belonged by rights as the son of a Republican general. M. le Duc d'Orléans, son of a regicide, member of the Jacobin Club, defender of Marat and indebted to Collot d'Herbois, seemed, indeed, to me, I must admit, if he had not greatly degenerated since 1793, to be far more advanced in 1829 than I was myself. He acted well up to the _mot_ he uttered the day I was writing to his dictation: "Monsieur Dumas, bear in mind that, if one is descended from Louis XIV., if only by means of one of his bastards, it is still a sufficient honour to be proud of." I had, of course, called forth this _mot_ by my ignorant hesitation. Besides, one could be proud of being descended from Louis XIV., while still blaming the turpitude of Louis XV. and the faults of Louis XVI.; furthermore, where had even our Republican fathers come from?--the Parc-aux-Cerfs and the Petit Trianon. So then the Duc d'Orléans, if not precisely a Republican prince, as he had been styled in 1792, was at least a citizen prince, as he was called in 1829. In short, it was good for my position, and in harmony with my sympathies, to remain attached to M. le Duc d'Orléans. All these reflections had had sufficient time to ripen in my mind before I received a letter from Oudard asking me to call on him at his office. Formerly, such an invitation would have made me very uneasy; now, it only made me smile, and I presented myself. Raulot bowed nearly to the ground before me; he opened the door and announced--

"M. Alexandre Dumas."

Oudard came to meet me with a laughing face.

"Well, my dear poet," he said, "it seems you have had an undoubted success?"

"Yes."

"First, let me congratulate you heartily.... But who could have foreseen it?"

"Those who suppressed my bonus money and kept back my salary; for I presume that if they had foreseen a failure they would not have had the cruelty to expose my mother and me to die of starvation."

"Did not M. de Broval write to you the night of the representation?" Oudard asked in some confusion.

"Yes, indeed; here is his letter."

I showed him the letter the reader has seen.

"And I am keeping it as a model," I continued, putting it back into my pocket again.

"As a model of what?"

"Of diplomatic lying and of stupid sycophancy."

"Come, that is strong language!"

"True, but one ought to call a spade a spade."

"However that may be, let us drop the subject and speak of your position here."

"That is equivalent to discussing castles in the air."

"I do not refer to your past position, for I am well aware that you would decline to remain in the household under the old conditions; neither do we desire you to do so.... You must have leisure for your work."

"Continue, my lord Mæcenas, speak in the name of Augustus; I am listening."

"No, on the contrary it is for you to speak. What do you desire?"

"I? I desired success and I have had it. I do not want anything else."

"But what can we do that will be agreeable to you?"

"Not a great deal."

"Nevertheless, there must be some position in the house you would like."

"There is none I covet; but there is one post that would suit my convenience."

"Which is that?"

"To be M. Casimir Delavigne's colleague at the library."

Oudard's facial muscles twitched with an expression indicative of, "You are indeed ambitious, my friend."

"Oh! indeed I quite understand the difficulties," I said.

"You see," Oudard continued, "we already have Vatout and Casimir, a librarian and assistant librarian."

"Of course, and that is ample, is it not, when there is no library?"

For, as a matter of fact, the library of the Duc d'Orléans, at that time especially, was very inferior.

"What do you mean by no library?" Oudard exclaimed; for, like the servant of a curé, he could not bear to have his master's house depreciated. "We have three thousand volumes!"

"You are mistaken, my dear Oudard: there are three thousand and four; for I saw the _Mémoires de Dumouriez_, which had just come from London, in the house of M. le Duc d'Orléans, the day before yesterday."

I gave the thrust good-humouredly, and so Oudard took it. He could not ward it off without acknowledging himself hit: he continued--

"Well, well, you are wonderfully clever, my friend; I will convey to monseigneur your desire to become attached to the household as librarian."

I stopped him.

"Stay, let us quite understand one another, Oudard."

"I do not wish for anything better."

"Did you not ask me to come to you?"

"Certainly."

"It was not I who came on my own initiative?"

"No."

"I should not have come if you had not written to me."

"That would have been very remiss on your part."

"Possibly; but, all the same, I did not come. Now you talk of a desire: I have not expressed any; it is not I who desire to remain attached to the household. If they want to keep me, they must make me librarian; as to salary, they need not give me any. You see I am making things exceedingly easy for His Royal Highness."

"Ah! are you always going to be wilful?"

"No, but I remember what M. le Duc d'Orléans condescended to write, by the side of my name, in his own handwriting, a month ago: 'Suppress his bonuses,' etc. etc."

"Come, I will tell you something that will restore the prince in your estimation."

"Ah! my dear Oudard, I am indeed far too insignificant an individual to lay claim to the right of quarrelling with him."

"Well, then, I fancy he would accept the dedication of your drama."

"The dedication of my play, my dear Oudard, belongs to the man who got it acted; my drama _Henri III._ will be dedicated to Taylor."

"You are making a mistake, my dear friend."

"No, I am repaying a debt."

"All right, we will not continue the subject; so, a librarian like Casimir Delavigne...."

"Or like Vatout, if the comparison seems to you to be simpler."

"Are you aware how epigrammatic you have become since your success?"

"No; it is only that I can now say aloud what I formerly thought unspoken."

"Well, I see clearly that you mean to have the last word."

"Of course; try and find a word to which I cannot fit an answer. _Au revoir!_"

"Adieu!"

Two days later, Oudard called me in again; he had discovered a post that would suit me much better than being librarian: namely, to be reader to Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans. I thanked Oudard; but I assured him that I still held to my first idea of being librarian or nothing at all.

We parted rather more coldly than at first. Two days later, I received a third letter; this time, he had found something that would suit me best of all. They would make me _chevalier d'honneur_ to Madame Adélaïde! I persisted obstinately that I wanted to be librarian. Finally, I received a fourth invitation, and I paid a fourth visit. They had decided to grant my request, and I was appointed assistant librarian, at a salary of 1200 francs.

As I had announced beforehand that the question of money was not of any consequence, they had taken advantage of it to suggest to monseigneur to pay me 300 francs less as librarian than they had paid me as a clerk. That didn't matter; but listen, and may Harpagon and Grandet hang themselves for not having invented what the people devised who arranged the affairs of M. le Duc d'Orléans and myself. As they had not paid me any salary for six months, they antedated my nomination by six months. Consequently, as I had a salary of 1500 francs as clerk and 1200 francs as librarian, they saved, by paying me for these six months as a librarian, the sum of 150 francs, which, added to my unpaid up bonuses of 1829, saved them 350 francs; and the 350 francs, added to the 50 francs cut off my bonus of 1828, amounted to a net total of 400 francs more into the princely coffers. It will be admitted, will it not? that the Duc d'Orléans was surrounded by men of large views! Unfortunately, these were the very same men who, later, surrounded the king.

When I was installed at the Library, I became acquainted with Vatout and Casimir Delavigne, who, as Oudard had warned me, did not welcome my advent with much warmth. Casimir Delavigne in particular, who, although he made it up with me afterwards, at first could not forgive me the success I had had with _Henri III._ Indeed, my success with _Henri III._ continued throughout the year, and, as there is a proverb to the effect that two successes, on the stage, never come together, the success of _Henri III._ prevented the success of _Marino Faliero_, which was awaiting its turn, and in which Mademoiselle Mars was to play Héléna. But Mademoiselle Mars was engaged for three long months in _Henri III._; then came her two months' holiday; so _Marino Faliero_ was put off until the coming winter. This did not in the least suit Casimir Delavigne.

I have related how Casimir Delavigne's dramatic affairs were conducted: a family council was called on account of _Marino Faliero_, and it was decided that the Doge of Venice should migrate to the Porte-Saint-Martin; that Madame Dorval, whose reputation had begun to spread, should replace Mademoiselle Mars and that Ligier should be seduced from the Odéon to play Marino Faliero. This migration made a great sensation. Casimir at the Porte-Saint-Martin! It was Coriolanus among the Volscians; all the papers wailed aloud and made moan over this exile of the national bard, and people began to look on me as a usurper who had risen up to drive out a crowned and anointed king from his legitimate throne. The situation was complicated by an event as novel as it was unexpected. A petition to the king appeared, entreating His Majesty to do for Corneille, Molière and Racine--who stood on their marble pedestals in the _foyer_ unmoved by this agitation--what His Majesty's august predecessor had done for King Ferdinand VII. when he was expelled by the Cortes:--to re-establish them on their thrones. Alas! no one was ever less ambitious to snatch other people's thrones than I.... I was willing enough to take a seat or a comfortable arm-chair, ay, an elevated one, well in view, by all means, but a throne! the word and the position were too classic, and I never aspired thereto. It is inconceivable, is it not? that there could be found seven men of letters sufficiently intolerant, silly and ridiculous to appeal to a king to proscribe a method of art, an invisible, indefinable and intangible conception, and boldly to say to him, "Sire, we are the representatives of Art; we alone know what is beautiful; we alone possess knowledge, taste and genius; true, the public hisses at us as soon as we appear; true, our tragedies do not attract anyone when they are acted; the Comedians play our pieces with marked aversion, it is true, since they do not draw the same profits from them, although expenses are the same; but what does all that matter! It is hard for us to die and to be forgotten; we would rather be hooted at than buried. Sire, issue your commands that our plays, and ours alone, be played;--for we are the sole descendants of Corneille, and Molière and Racine, whilst these new-comers are but the bastards of Shakespeare and Goethe and Schiller!"

How very logical! I was a bastard of Shakespeare, of Goethe and of Schiller, because I had just composed _Henri III._, a play so pre-eminently French, that, if it were open to any reproach, it would be that I had represented the manners of the end of the sixteenth century too faithfully. And as the thing really sounds incredible, we will place before our readers' own eyes the petition of these gentlemen:--

"SIRE,--The glory of letters is not the least brilliant among French glories, and the glory of our theatre is not the least brilliant of our literary glories. So thought your ancestors when they honoured the Théâtre-Français with a special protection; so thought Louis XIV., to whom it owed its first organisation. That regal protector of letters, persuaded that the _chefs d'œuvre_ which his reign had produced could not be represented too perfectly, decreed that the best actors who were scattered about in the various companies which the capital then possessed should be united into one company, to be called the Comedians in Ordinary to the King. He gave rules to this select company, granted them rights and, among others, the exclusive privilege of representing tragedy and high comedy; and he added to these favours that of endowment. His object in doing this, sire, as you are aware, was not solely to reward those actors who had the good fortune to please him, but also to encourage them in the exercise of an art which by its elevation should be in harmony with his royal spirit; also to perpetuate the prosperity of that art, and to establish a model theatre on a solid foundation, for both actors and authors. For a long while, the intentions of Louis XIV. were fulfilled by his successors, in whom there was no falling off, either in good taste or in generosity; the two arts that he loved, and to which the French stage owed its dignity and its superiority, have reigned there in almost undisputed sway. Such was the condition of things at the time of the decease of your august brother; why must it be confessed that it is no longer the same to-day? The death of the actor whose talents vied with those of the most perfect artist of any epoch, has brought about more than one injury to the noble art which he upheld. Whether from depravity of taste or from consciousness of their inability to take his place, certain associates of the Théâtre-Français have pretended that the method of art in which Talma excelled could no longer be beneficially carried on; they are seeking to exclude tragedy from the stage and to substitute for it plays composed in imitation of the most eccentric dramas that foreign literature affords--dramas which no one had ever dared before to reproduce except in our lowest theatres. It is quite conceivable that third-rate actors should pursue these tactics, which are in accordance with their indifferent performances; and that, since they are incapable of rising to the height of tragedy, they should wish to lower art to the level of their talent; but it is almost inconceivable, sire, that this attitude should be encouraged by those who should combat it. They not only violate the privileges granted them in order to advance, on every possible occasion, the particular method of art to which they have become attached; but, in order to satisfy the exigencies of this method, which seeks less to elevate the soul, entice the heart and occupy the mind, than to dazzle the eyes by material means, by the distraction of vain show and by stage effect, they are exhausting the capital of the theatre, increasing its debt and bringing about its ruin. And, in addition, as tragedy still struggles, and struggles with some success, against its ignoble rival, in spite of all that is done to prevent it, the authorities, not satisfied with refusing to undertake necessary expenses and supply the apparatus needed, are doing their best to discourage tragic representations altogether, and only give subsidies to the principal actors in subjects of which the public disapproves; far worse still, in order to make all tragic acting henceforth impossible, in anticipation of the time when the two leading exponents of tragedy, Mademoiselle Duchesnois and M. Lafond, shall have retired from the stage, they have compelled them to submit to an exile of a year, under cover of a holiday, during which time they promise themselves to complete the absolute ruin of the theatre of Racine, Corneille and Voltaire.

"Sire, are the agents in whom you have placed confidence, to watch over and control the theatre, responding properly to your beneficent designs? Was it intended that the liberty with which they were entrusted was to be used to advance the cause of melodrama to the detriment of tragedy? Ought the funds placed, by your liberality, at their disposal, in order to advance the cause of good taste, to be squandered over their own particular fancies, which tend to make the greatest names in Art subservient to the Melpomene of the boulevards, and to reduce their sublime art to the condition of a vile trade? We are convinced, sire, that the glory of your reign is concerned in the preservation of all sources of French glory, and we therefore consider it our duty to call your attention to the degradation by which the foremost of our theatres is threatened. Sire, the evil is already grave! In a few months' time it will be past redress; in a few months' time the theatre founded by Louis le Grand will be entirely closed to works which have been the delight of the most polite of courts, the most enlightened of nations; it will have fallen below the level of the meanest of stages, or, rather, the Théâtre-Français will have ceased to exist.

_"(Signed)_ A. V. ARNAULT, N. LEMERCIER, VIENNET, JOUY, ANDRIEUX, JAY, O. LEROY"

This curious epistle was capped by another quite as strange--or, more correctly speaking, it was preceded by it. The letter of Mademoiselle Duchesnois, which we shall produce in its entirety, in the same way that we have produced the petition of these gentlemen, was the rocket which warned the public that a great pyrotechnic display was about to take place.

My readers will recall the visit M. Lafond paid me in my office, to ask me if I had a smart, well-groomed fellow in my play who could say to Queen Christine, "_Sacrebleu!_ your Majesty has not the right to assassinate this poor devil!" It will be remembered that I told him I had not. Whereupon M. Lafond had turned daintily upon his heels, remarking that his visit was, therefore, fruitless.

After the reading of _Henri III._, M. Lafond had said to himself that the part of that extremely well set up courtier, the Duc de Guise, would be his by right; but, alack, he had seen the rôle given to Joanny, who played it strikingly well although he was not irreproachable. It had been just as bad for poor Mademoiselle Duchesnois: she had seen successively the rôle of Christine and that of the Duchesse de Guise pass over her; she had done me the honour of wishing to act them both, and each time, with infinite trouble, I had had to explain to her how impossible it was for her to undertake either rôle; consequently, she was furious. Now, anger is a bad counsellor, so it came about that Mademoiselle Duchesnois wrote the following letter under its sway:--

"MONSIEUR,--I should have preferred to keep out of the quarrel which is engaging the attention of the newspapers concerning the Théâtre-Français; but, inasmuch as the defence of a system which is compromising our social existence is based upon erroneous facts, I have thought it my duty to the public to offer certain explanations which will show the question in its true light. Unquestionably, the first duty of the French Comedians should be to retain the favour of the public, and we cannot be reproached with respect to this, since, during the past three years, we have successively produced, at a very heavy expense, all the works of the new school; in consequence, our shares have fallen from sixteen thousand to seven thousand francs, and we have contracted, in the interim, a debt estimated at a hundred thousand francs. However, the old repertoire and works based on those of the old masters, such as _Tartufe, Phèdre, Zaïre, Germanicus, Sylla, Pierre de Portugal, Marie Stuart, l'École des Vieillards, Blanche, le Roman_ while they no longer glorify the stage, still bring some money to our pockets, and help to provide for the terrible expenses of the scenery and properties required for the dramas. In spite of the ruin of our prosperity and the increase of our liabilities, I should have kept silence if the rumour had not spread abroad that we were about to dissolve our Association in order to prepare ourselves for a new management, and to raise a so-called Romantic theatre on our ruins. These reports have gained enough strength to be repeated by several papers, and it has been noticed that the usual supporters of the Commissary Royal have gone out of their way to point out the advantages of such an absurd proposition, instead of denying it. The tragic actors, who, since the arrival of M. Taylor, have been the object of an animadversion for which, until recently, they have not been able to find a cause, were attacked in these same papers with unheard-of bitterness, and with the catchword of the moment, _The public does not want any more tragedies._ There is no denying that tragedy no longer brings in the enormous sums of the prosperous days of Talma and of the first fifteen years of my theatrical career; but, without dwelling upon its importance and its necessity, it can be seen by the receipts--not those obtained from the Commissary Royal, but the actual receipts entered on the _registre des pauvres_ (which I am having looked out, at this very moment, in order to their publication)--that tragedy would again see prosperous days if the Government would grant it the protection that is its due, rather than persecute the actors and authors who are still its supporters. It would be a difficult task to enumerate all the instances of M. Taylor's ill-will: here are one or two which will be enough to convince you. Three young actors who were taken away from the Odéon showed some interest and aptitude for tragedy. M. Taylor tried to drive them away from the Comédie-Française. He succeeded with regard to MM. Ligier and Victor; and, if M. David has been saved to us, it was because a decision of the court overruled the Commissary Royal. M. Beauvallet, a young man who roused high hopes among the friends of dramatic art, has been obliged to take an engagement at a secondary theatre. Nor is this all; my presence and that of M. Lafond were obstacles in the way of carrying out the plans of the Romantic school. So we received, this winter, an intimation, almost tantamount to a command, to leave Paris for a year, without having solicited anything of the kind, as certain wrongly informed journals have announced. It is under these circumstances, monsieur, that distinguished literary men who, by their connection with actors, are much better acquainted with the situation at the Théâtre-Français than are the writers of many articles, have felt it their duty to present a memorial to the King, not in order to exclude the new style of drama (a pleasantry invented by M. Taylor's friends to hold up to _ridicule_ a perfectly justifiable proceeding), but to claim a protection for authors who belong to the _Classical_ school and for the actors who support them, at least equal to that given to the Romantic school.

"I beg you, monsieur, to have the goodness to announce that I have just cited MM. Taylor and the Vicomte de la Rochefoucauld before the courts to answer for their violation of the rules of our company, by means of which they have prorogued a committee for the past four years, a third part of which, according to the terms of our statutes, ought to have been renewed annually. I beg you also to be so good as to announce, in my name, that the article contained in the _Journal de Paris_ of this morning is incorrect in all its statements and in all its calculations, and that I shall hasten to put the proofs of this statement before the public with the least possible delay. Allow me at the same time to contradict the false statement that any one of those who signed the petition wished to _withdraw_ or to _disown_ his signature; on the contrary, I know that several of our most distinguished authors are preparing to make public their adhesion to the memorial to the King.--I am, etc., J. DUCHESNOIS"

We said before that under a clever ministry everybody, even the king, has his wits sharpened.

The king made answer to his petitioners as follows:--

"GENTLEMEN,--I cannot do anything in the matter you desire; I only occupy one seat in the theatre, like every other Frenchman."

Now, I shall be asked how it was that M. Arnault reconciled this demand directed against me with his friendliness towards me? How could he receive me intimately at his house and table every Sunday, while he was doing his best to have me driven away from the theatre? Oh! be quite easy on that score! M. Arnault had a more logical mind than that. On the Sunday following the production of _Henri III._--namely, the very next day--I found Madame Arnault quite alone in the house, and she said to me, in course of conversation--

"Dumas, when you intend dining with us, tell us beforehand; for otherwise you will run the risk of dining _tête-à-tête_ with me, as to-day, which is not very entertaining for you."

I took the hint, and I never returned there again.

The success of _Henri III._, therefore, it will be seen, brought in its train all the advantages and all the drawbacks of great successes. I was the fashionable author for the rest of the winter of 1829; I received invitations innumerable, and M. Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld, Minister of the King's Household, wrote me a letter, giving me free entry to all the royal theatres, being shrewd enough to see that, if he did not give me the privilege, I was just the sort of man to take it. Devéria made a lithograph of me; David d'Angers, a medallion. It will be seen that nothing was wanting to complete my triumph, not even the ridiculous side which always accompanies a rising reputation.

Then a crowd of anecdotes were related about me, each more absurd than the last. It was said that, after the representation of _Henri III._, when the lights in the house had all been put out, a sabbatical dance took place _round_ the bust of Racine (it is set against the wall!), by the light of the dying fires in the green-room, similar to Boulanger's magnificent dance; that the spectral dancers were heard to utter the sacrilegious refrain, "Racine is fallen!" and that even shouts for blood were raised by a young fanatic of the name of Amaury Duval, who demanded the heads of the Academicians--a parricidal cry, since this unfortunate creature was the son of M. Amaury Duval of the Institut, and nephew of M. Alexandre Duval of the Académie française.

Further, a rabid Romantic, to whom God had sent one of the seven plagues of Egypt in punishment for his sins, was accused--and this story might well be true--of saying in a burst of frenzied scratching, "Racine was a regular scoundrel!"

This fanatic was called Gentil.

Stories like these, told by the fireside, were enough, it may well be imagined, to make the hair of all respectable people stand on end, and the _Constitutionnel_, which has always been the literary and political representative of respectable people, was particularly shocked.

It was from this period that every worthy man gave himself up to hatred of all ideas which did not date back a half-century, and of every author who was not at least sixty years of age--a style of writing which lasted from 1830 to 1850--the vigorous style of hatred to which Alceste refers, and which, we think, eats far more readily into the hearts of weak-minded, wicked and jealous people, than into the hearts of men of goodwill.

People waited in daily expectation of a new St. Bartholomew's Eve, and poor M. Auger, who had just killed himself under such sad circumstances, was congratulated on having escaped a general massacre by means of suicide. So great was the consternation that the whole of the Classical party only produced one play--which was a failure. This was _Elisabeth d'Angleterre_, by M. Ancelot. For we do not call Casimir Delavigne's _Marino Faliero_, pompously christened a melodrama in verse, a classical production. The very choice of subject, _Marino Faliero_, and the imitation of Byron's principal scenes, formed a twofold concession to foreign genius and to modern taste.

Casimir Delavigne, as we have remarked elsewhere, was born fifteen years too soon to take part whole-heartedly in the new school; his style seemed ever hampered, and incessantly vacillating between Voltaire and Byron, Chénier and Shakespeare, never succeeding in clothing his ideas in a definite manner. Still, nothing had been neglected to make _Marino Faliero_ a success. The papers had made much of the ingratitude of the members of the Comédie-Française and of the transfer of M. Ligier to the Porte-Saint-Martin. It was announced that the music of the overture was by Rossini, and the costumes by M. Delaroche. Now M. Delaroche was the exact analogy in painting of what Casimir Delavigne was in literature; both at that time enjoyed far too great a reputation to last, and were destined to see it pale and decrease and almost expire during their life-time. However, Rossini had composed the music, and Delaroche had designed the costumes.

The play was produced on 30 May, and was very successful; but, strange to relate, the author's most elaborately conceived rôle was not the most applauded one, nor did the actor's chief success fall to the share of Ligier or of Madame Dorval: it fell to Gobert, who played the rôle of Israël Bertuccio.

The work was mounted with great sumptuousness and scrupulous care, especially with regard to the costumes. M. Delaroche, having deemed it desirable, in order to lend a more picturesque effect to his designs, that they should be wafted by the wind, the theatrical costumier devised the ingenious notion of sewing air into the mantles.

I have elsewhere given my opinion of this play.