CHAPTER IV

A passing cab--Madame Dorval in the _Incendiaire_--Two actresses--The Duc d'Orléans asks for the Cross of the Legion of Honour on my behalf--His recommendation has no effect--M. Empis--Madame Lafond's Salon--My costume as Arnaute--Madame Malibran--Brothers and sisters in Art

The day after, or rather the evening of the second day after my first representation, I was crossing the place de l'Odéon at one o'clock in the morning, passing from the lighted theatre into the darkness of the street, and from the noise of the applause of a crowded house to the silence of an empty square, from intoxication to reflection, from reality to dreams, when a woman's head appeared at the door of a cab calling me by name. I turned round, the cab pulled up and I opened the door.

"Are you M. Dumas?" the person inside inquired.

"Yes, madame."

"Very well, come inside and kiss me. Ah! you possess marvellous talent, and you don't draw women badly either!"

It made me laugh, and I kissed the fair speaker. She who spoke thus to me was Dorval--Dorval to whom I could have retorted in the same words--

"You have marvellous talent, and you take off women rather well."

The fact is that since we had seen Dorval act Malvina in the _Vampire_ she had improved immensely. In the _Incendiaire_, especially, she had been perfectly magnificent. Those who read these lines now will not know what the play was: I can only recollect a priest's part, which Bocage played excellently well, and a confession scene in which Dorval was sublime. Picture to yourselves a young girl who has had a torch put into her hands; how, or by what means, I no longer remember, but no matter; besides, that was twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, and I have forgotten the drama and, I repeat, I can only recollect the actress. She acted the confession scene, referred to above, on her knees: it lasted a whole quarter of an hour, during which space of time one held one's breath or only breathed in weeping. One night Madame Dorval was more beautiful, more tender and more pathetic than ever: and I will tell you why. You will have seen pictures by Ruysdael and Hobbema, and will recall how rays of sunlight stray across their landscapes, lighting up a corner of the grey sky, and illuminating the misty atmosphere, where the great oxen graze in the tall grass. Well, then, listen to this. When the player is fatigued, having played the same part over from ten to fifty times, inspiration gradually dies down and genius slumbers and emotion gets deadened; the actor's sky grows grey and his atmosphere clouded, and he searches for rays of sunshine like those that illumine the canvases of Hobbema or Ruysdael. The sight of a friend among the spectators, a talented fellow-artist leaning over the dress-circle, is, to him, as a ray of sunlight; a thoughtful face with eyes shining in the dim light of a box. Then communication is established between the house and the stage; the electric current is perceived and, thanks to it, the player returns to the days of the earliest performances; all the slumbering chords awake, and suddenly weep, mourn and sob more quiveringly than ever; the public applauds and shouts bravo, and thinks that it is for it the player works these wonders. Poor deluded public! It is towards some kindred soul, unsuspected by you, that all this effort, those cries and tears are directed! You simply get the benefit of it as from dew or light or flame. But, after all, what matters it to you who pours the dew down, who spreads this light, who lights this flame, since in this dew and light and flame you refresh and light and warm yourself? So, one night, Dorval had surpassed herself--for whom? She had not the slightest idea. It was for a woman in the audience--a woman who for three hours had kept her spellbound beneath her eagle glance; for three hours Dorval saw none of the other people in the house, she wept and talked and lived and, in a word, acted for that one woman alone: when she applauded and cried "Bravo!" the actress had been paid for her labour, rewarded for her pains and compensated for her talent! She had said to herself, "I am satisfied since she is." Then the curtain had fallen and, breathless, crushed, almost dead from exhaustion, like a pythoness when removed from her tripod, Dorval went to her room; from victress she became victim, and fell half fainting upon her couch. Suddenly the door of her dressing-room opened, and the unknown woman appeared on the threshold. Dorval sprang up trembling and took her by both hands as though she were a friend. For a few minutes the two women looked at one another in silence, smiling, with tears in their eyes.

"Forgive me, madame," the unknown said, with incredible sweetness of voice; "but I could not return home without telling you of the joy, the emotion, the happiness I owe to you. Oh! it was wonderful, sublime, exquisite!"

Dorval looked at her and thanked her with her eyes, and an inclination of her head and a motion of the shoulders peculiarly her own, all the while interrogating her, inquiring with every muscle of her countenance--

"But who in the world are you, madame? Who are you?"

The unknown guessed her thoughts, and replied--only those who had heard that wonderful siren speak can conceive the sweetness of her tones--

"I am Madame Malibran."

Dorval uttered a cry and pointed to the only picture which adorned her room. It was a portrait of Madame Malibran as Desdemona. Henceforth Madame Dorval possessed one of the two things she had hitherto lacked before she could become a woman of the highest merit: a friend who would be true to her but, at the same time, discriminating; and such a friendship Madame Malibran offered her. Now that she had her portion of friendship, it rested with Providence to bestow upon her that of love.

After Madame Dorval had played the parts of Adèle d'Hervey and Marion Delorme, she played Kitty Bell; by that time she had developed into a most accomplished woman and a consummate actress. Dorval's exclamation when she stopped me near the Odéon, and the artistic freemasonry she frankly sealed with a fraternal kiss, made me very happy! For pride to be satisfied, praise must come from a higher source or, at the very least, from as high a one as that of the recipient. For the praise that comes from above is ambrosial, that from below is but incense.

One day, Michelet wrote to me (I had never either seen or spoken with him previously).

"Monsieur," he said, "I like and admire you; you are one of the forces of nature."

This letter gave me keener and more real pleasure than if I had received the news that the grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur had been bestowed upon me. Mention of the Légion d'honneur suggests a few words relative to the sensation caused by the successes of both _Henri III._ and _Christine._

_Christine_ had been played on 20 February, and on 9 March, very probably at the request of the Duc de Chartres, who had been present, at his own desire, at the first representation, the Duc d'Orléans wrote as follows to M. Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld:--

"PALAIS-ROYAL, 9 _March_ 1830

"I hear, monsieur, that you intend to submit to the King the suggestion of granting the Cross of the Légion d'honneur to M. Alexandre Dumas, when the season comes round at which he usually grants promotions to that order.

"M. Alexandre Dumas' success as a dramatist, indeed, seems to me to deserve such a mark of esteem, and I shall be the more pleased for him to get it, since he has been attached to my secretarial staff and in my forestry department for the past six years, during which time he has supported his family in a most praiseworthy way. I am told he intends to travel in the north of Europe, and that he sets great store by the nomination taking place before his departure. I do not know whether 12 April would be a suitable occasion on which to submit the proposition to the King; but I wish to suggest the idea to you, as a token of the interest I take in M. Dumas.

"Allow me to take advantage of this opportunity to offer you the assurance of my sincere regard for you.--Yours affectionately, LOUIS-PHILIPPE D'ORLÉANS"

One day, when I was in the library, M. le Duc de Orléans came in with a letter in his hand. I had risen at his entrance and remained standing as he advanced towards me.

"Look here, Monsieur Dumas," he said, "this is what has been asked on your behalf. Read it."

Intensely astonished, I read the letter I have just transcribed above. I knew that M. Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld, who was very friendly towards me, had been urged by Beauchesne to send my name in to M. de la Bouillerie's office; but it was far enough from my thoughts that the Duc d'Orléans would ever consent to recommend me himself. I blushed excessively, stammered out a few words of thanks and asked him to whom I owed the good fortune of being recommended by him.

"To a friend," he replied, and that was all I could extract from him.

Unfortunately, the duke's recommendation was of no avail. I have since been informed that it was M. Empis, head clerk of the king's household, who frustrated the kind intention of the prince and of M. de la Rochefoucauld. M. Empis belonged to an entirely opposite school of literature from mine; he had written a very remarkable play called _La Mère et la Fille_, the leading part in which was created by Frédérick Lemaître, upon his first appearance at the Odéon, and the piece was extraordinarily successful. I said above "Unfortunately the duke's recommendation was of no avail." Let us explain the word _unfortunately._ Unfortunate it was, indeed; for at that time the Cross of the Légion d'honneur had not been bestowed broadcast, and it would have been a rich prize had I obtained it. I was young and full of hope and vigour and enthusiasm; I was just on the threshold of my career; and therefore the fact of my nomination would have given me very great delight. But it is among the misfortunes of those who have the power of giving such honours that they never know how to give them in time; this cross, that the Duc d'Orléans asked for me in 1830, King Louis-Philippe only gave me in 1836, at the Fêtes of Versailles; even then it was not he himself but the prince royal who gave it me, upon the occasion of his marriage, when the orders at his disposal were one grand'croix and two croix d'Officier and one croix de Chevalier. The grand'croix was for François Arago; the two "croix d'Officier" were for Augustin Thierry and Victor Hugo; the croix de Chevalier was for me.

Having reached this period of my life, I will tell all the stories connected with this order, and how M. de Salvandy, so that he might be forgiven for presenting the croix d'Officier to Hugo and the croix de Chevalier to me, felt obliged to give one at the same time to an excellent fellow, whose name was so totally unknown as to preserve, by its very obscurity, the celebrity of our own. The result was that I put my cross inside my pocket, instead of pinning it in my buttonhole.

And this reminds me of the story of the father of one of my literary confrères, a wealthy cotton merchant, who, having received the cross, because he had lent Charles X. two million francs, only wore the ribbon in the buttonhole of his fob. Thus I had, for the time being, to deprive myself of the red ribbon. I was angry at first with M. Empis for having defeated my pretty dream, but far more angry with him later for having written _Julie, ou la Réparation_!

However, we managed to find endless diversions during that happy winter of 1830, severe though it was. It is a remarkable fact that revolutions almost always surprise people in the midst of dances, and kings in the midst of fireworks. There were, too, any number of masked balls. There was a Salon held in Paris in those days by Madame Lafond, which was entirely comprised of artistic society. Madame Lafond was, at that date, a woman of between thirty-six and thirty-eight years of age, in the zenith of her beauty, which was that of a brunette, and she was admirably preserved: she had dark speaking eyes and black wavy hair, add to these charms a most bewitching smile, the most graceful hands imaginable, and an intellect that was remarkable both for its power and its kindliness, and you will still only have a very imperfect impression of the mistress of that Salon. Her husband was the musician Lafond, who was a talented violin player: he was small and fair, and supported his wife to perfection at her soirées, playing the same part Prince Albert plays at the Court of Queen Victoria. I believe he was killed by a carriage accident. He had two sons a great deal younger than I, who still wore little round jackets and turned-down collars, and were sent to bed at eight o'clock. They have grown up into two delightful young fellows, whom I have since met at various Embassies.

In those days, neither the costume of pierrots nor that of dock labourers had become the fashionable rage; Chicard and Gavarni were still hidden in the dark depths of the future; and the Opera ballet had not emerged from the traditional domino in which it would have been a difficult matter to thread those mad galops, to the sound of that terrible music, which won Musard the nickname of "the Napoleon of the Cancan." The real cancan, which was a capital national dance, the only one which possessed the elements of spontaneity and of the picturesque, was consigned to the outskirts of civilisation, with other contraband goods proscribed by custom.

Now, the choice of a suitable costume was a very serious business to an author of twenty-six, who had already begun to possess the reputation, whether erroneously or not, of being quite an Othello. I had made the acquaintance at Firmin's balls--I do not know why I have never yet spoken of those delightful réunions of his, where one was sure to find, without powder or paint, the youngest and prettiest faces in Paris--of a clever young fellow, a pupil of M. Ingres, and who has since become the celebrated antiquary Amaury Duval. He had just returned from Greece, where he had taken part in an artistic expedition that had been sent to the land of Pericles, after the battle of Navarino. He appeared at one of Firmin's balls in the disguise of a Pallikar. The Pallikar was all the rage then; Byron had introduced, it, and all our pretty women had collected funds for that mother of lovely women, the land of Greece. From this time I became great friends with Amaury and, later, I gave his name to one of my romances, in remembrance of our youthful friendship; or, rather, let us say, of the friendship of our youth. He proclaimed himself a fanatical partisan of my works, and he it was, it will be recollected, son and nephew of an Academician, who was said to have demanded the heads of the members of the Academy, after the first representation of _Henri III._ So I went and hunted him up, for it was most important at a fancy dress ball to make the most of one's natural advantages. I have said that I never was good-looking, but I was tall and well built, although rather slight; my face was thin, and I had large brown eyes, with a dark complexion; in a word, if it was impossible to create beauty, it was easy enough to form character. So we decided that the dress of an Albanian would suit me exactly; and Amaury accordingly designed me a costume. Now, the turban was the most striking part of this costume, and, being rolled two or three times round the head, it passed round the neck and was tied at the point it started from. But the costume had to be made, and, as it was covered with embroidery and braid and lace, it took a fortnight to make.

At last, the evening arrived, and the dress was finished by eleven o'clock; by midnight I entered Madame Lafond's house. This costume of mine was then almost unknown in France: the jacket and leggings were of red velvet, embroidered with gold; the _fustanelle_, as white as snow, had not been robbed of a single inch of its proper width; the dazzling silver arms were marvellously wrought, and, above all, the originality of the head-dress drew all eyes upon me. I guessed I should make a triumphant sensation, but had no idea of the method in which it would be expressed. I had not taken ten steps into the room before a young woman, clad as a Roman priestess, crowned with verbena and cypress, made her apologies to her partner and left him to come to me. She then led me apart into a small boudoir and, making me sit down, remained standing in front of me and said--

"Now, Monsieur Dumas, you are going to teach me how to put on a turban like that; to-morrow I am acting Desdemona with Zucchelli and you know how those Italian devils array themselves; I should, at any rate, like him to have a head-dress like yours, it would work me up!"

The Roman priestess was Madame Malibran, of whom I shall soon have much more to say and of whom I have already spoken twice in connection with the first representation of _Henri III._, where she hung over the edge of her box on the third tier throughout the fifth act; and also in connection with Dorval, into whose arms she ran to fling herself after a representation of _l'Incendiaire._ Yes, it was Madame Malibran, the incomparable artist, who alone, perhaps, of all artists, wedded the drama to song, strength to grace, joy to sadness, to a degree no one has ever attained. Alas! she too died young, and is now but a shadow on our horizon! Shade of Desdemona and of Rosine, of la Somnambule and of Norma, a dazzling, harmonious, melancholy shadow! that those who saw the living reality can still revive by the aid of memory, but who is merely a phantom for those who saw her not! She died when still young, but thereby she, at any rate, carried away with her into the tomb all the advantages that are to be derived from premature death; she died beautiful, loving and beloved, at the zenith of her triumph, girt with glory, crowned with laurels and enshrouded in fame! But theatrical artists leave nothing that can be transmitted to posterity, no traces of the purity of their singing, the grace of their movements or the passion of their gestures--nothing but a reflection which remains in the memory of their contemporaries. It therefore remains for us, painters or poets, who do leave something behind us after we have gone; to us, privileged children of Art, who possess the faculty of reproducing the form or the spirit of material and perishable things through the medium of our brushes and pens; to whom God has given a mirror for a soul, which remembers instead of forgets; it rests with us to make you live again, O brothers and sisters! to depict you as you were, and, if possible, to reflect your images even greater and more beautiful than they were in life!

Did my readers think when I began these volumes that my aim was merely egotistic, for the purpose of talking everlastingly of myself? No, indeed; I meant it to serve for a huge frame in which to depict all my brethren in Art, fathers or children of my century, the great spirits and charming personalities, whose hands, cheeks and lips I have pressed; those who have loved me, and whom I have loved; those who have been, or who still are, the ornament of our times; including those I may never have known, and those even who have detested me! The _Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas_--why, it would be absurd! What could I have become alone, as an isolated individual, a lost atom, a speck of dust amidst so many whirlwinds Simply nothing. But by associating myself with you, by pressing with my left hand the right hand of an artist, with my right hand the left hand of a prince, I became a link in the golden chain which connects the past with the future. No, I am not writing my own Memoirs, but those of all I have known; and as I have come in contact with the greatest and most illustrious people in France, it is really Memoirs of France I am writing.

I spent the best part of the night teaching Madame Malibran how to put on an Albanian turban, and the next day Zucchelli played Othello in a head-dress similar to the one I had worn on the previous evening. Madame Malibran was quite right. Othello's coiffure had its effect, for she had never been greater or more sublimely beautiful!

Farewell, Marie! Her name too was Marie, in common with Marie Dorval and Marie Pleyel--_au revoir!_ I shall meet you again at Naples!