CHAPTER I

Sequel to the preparations for my ball--Oil and distemper --Inconveniences of working at night--How Delacroix did his task --The ball--Serious men--La Fayette and Beauchene--Variety of costumes--The invalid and the undertaker's man--The last galop--A political play--A moral play

Let us return from painters to paintings. The eleventh decorator had signed himself Ziégler. We did not reckon on him, but he had foreseen what might happen; one panel had been left blank and this was given to him on which to make a scene from _La Esmeralda._ Three days before the ball, everybody was at his post: Alfred Johannot was sketching his scene from _Cinq-Mars_; Tony Johannot, his _Sire de Giac;_ Clément Boulanger, his _Tour de Nesle;_ Louis Boulanger his _Lucrèce Borgia;_ Jadin and Decamps worked in collaboration at their _Debureau,_ Grandville at his _Orchestre,_ Barye at his _Tigres,_ Nanteuil at his door-panels, which were two medallions representing Hugo and Alfred de Vigny. Delacroix alone failed to answer to the appeal: they wanted to dispose of his panel, but I answered for him.

It was very diverting to see the start for this steeplechase between ten painters of equal merit. Each of them, without, apparently, watching his neighbour, followed with his eyes first the charcoal then the paint-brush. None of them--the Johannots in particular, being engravers and designers of vignettes and painters of easel pictures--were accustomed to the use of distemper. But the painters of large canvases soon got into the way of it. Among these, Louis and Clément Boulanger seemed as though they had never worked in any other medium. Jadin and Decamps discovered wonderful tones in this new method of execution, and declared they never wanted to paint in anything again but distemper. Ziégler took to it with some ease, Barye made belief that it was water-colour on a grand scale, but easier and more quickly done than water-colour on the small scale. Grandville drew with red chalk, charcoal and Spanish white chalk, and produced prodigious effects with these three crayons. We waited with curiosity for Delacroix, whose facility of execution has become proverbial. As I have said, only the two Johannots were behindhand. They knew they would not be finished if they did not work at night. Consequently, whilst others played, smoked and gossiped, both continued their day's work when night came, rejoicing in the tones given them by the light, and the superiority of lamplight to that of day, for painting intended to be seen by lamplight. They did not stop working till midnight, but they caught up with the others by so doing. Next day, when light broke, Alfred and Tony uttered cries of despair: by lamplight they had mistaken yellow for white and white for yellow, green for blue and blue for green. The two pictures looked like huge _omelettes aux fines herbes._ At this juncture Ciceri _père_ came in. He had but to glance

at the two pictures to guess what had happened.

"Bravo!" he said; "we have a green sky and yellow clouds! But that is a mere nothing!"

Indeed, it was more specially in the sky that the error had been committed. He took up the brushes and with broad, vigorous, powerful strokes he repainted the skies of both pictures in one minute: the one calm, serene and azure, leaving a glimpse of the splendours of Dante's paradise through the blue of the firmament; the other low, cloudy, charged with electricity, ready to burst forth into lightning flashes.

All the young painters learnt in an instant the secrets of decoration, which they had been hours groping after on the previous day. Nobody cared about working at night. Besides, thanks to the lesson given by Ciceri _père,_ things were progressing with giant strides. There was no more news of Delacroix than if he had never existed. On the night of the second day I sent to him to ask if he remembered that the ball was fixed for the next day. He sent reply that I need not be anxious and he would come at breakfast-time next morning. Work began with the dawn next day. Most of the workers, moreover, had their task three-quarters finished. Clément Boulanger and Barye had done. Louis Boulanger had no more than three or four hours' work. Decamps was putting the last touches to his _Debureau,_ and Jadin to his poppies and corn-flowers; Grandville was at work on his door tops, when, as he had promised, Delacroix arrived.

"Well, now, how are you getting on?" he asked.

"You see for yourself," said each worker, standing aside to let his work be seen.

"Oh, really! but you are doing miniature-work here! You should have told me: I would have come a month ago."

He went round all the four rooms, stopping before each panel and finding something pleasant to say to each of his confrères, thanks to the charming spirit with which he is endowed. Then, as they were going to breakfast, he breakfasted too.

"Well?" he asked, when breakfast was done, turning towards the empty panel.

"Well, there it is!" I said. "It is the panel for the _Crossing of the Red Sea_; the sea has gone back, the Israelites have crossed, the Egyptians have not yet arrived."

"Then I will take advantage of the fact to do something else. What would you like me to stick up there?"

"Oh, you know, a King Rodrigo after a battle:

'Sur les rives murmurantes Du fleuve aux oncles sanglantes, Le roi sans royaume allait, Froissant, dans ses mains saignantes, Les grains d'or d'un chapelet.'"

"Ah, is that what you want?"

"Yes."

"You will not ask me for something else when it is half done?"

"Of course not!"

"Here goes, then, for King Rodrigo!"

And, without taking off his little black coat which clung closely to his body, without turning up his sleeves or taking off his cuffs, or putting on a blouse or cotton jacket, Delacroix began by taking his charcoal and, in three or four strokes, he had drawn the horse; in five or six, the cavalier; in seven or eight, the battlefield, dead, dying and fugitives included; then, making sufficient out of this rough sketch to be intelligible to himself, he took up brushes and began to paint. And, in a flash, as if one had unveiled a canvas, one saw appear under his hand, first a cavalier, bleeding, injured and wounded, half dragged by his horse, who was as hurt as himself, holding on by the mere support of his stirrups, and leaning on his long lance; round him, in front and behind him, the dead in heaps; by the riverside, the wounded trying to put their lips to the water, and leaving tracks of blood behind them; as far as the eye could see, away towards the horizon stretched the battlefield, ruthless and terrible; above it all, in a horizon made dense by the vapour of blood, a sun was setting like a red buckler in a forge; then, finally, a blue sky which, as it melted away into the distance, became an indefinable shade of green, with rosy clouds on it like the down of an ibis. The whole thing was wonderful to see: a circle gathered round the master and each one of the artists left his task to come and clap his hands without jealousy or envy at the new Rubens, who improvised both composition and execution as he went on. It was finished in two or three hours' time. At five that afternoon, owing to a large fire, all was dry and they could place the forms against the walls. The ball had created an enormous stir. I had invited nearly all the artists in Paris; those I had forgotten wrote to remind me of their existence. Many society women had done the same, but they asked to be allowed to come masked: it was an impertinence towards other women and I left it to the responsibility of those who had offered it. It was a fancy dress ball, but not a masked one; the order was strict, and I hired two dozen dominoes for the use of impostors, whoever they might be, who attempted to introduce themselves in contraband dress.

At seven o'clock, Chevet arrived with a fifty-pound salmon, and a roebuck roasted whole, served on a silver dish which looked as though it had been borrowed from Gargantua's sideboard, and a gigantic pâté, all to correspond. Three hundred bottles of Bordeaux were put down to warm, three hundred bottles of Burgundy were cooling, five hundred bottles of champagne were on ice.

I had discovered in the library, in a little book of engravings by Titian's brother, a delightful costume of 1525: hair cut round and hanging over the shoulders, bound in with a gold band; a sea-green jerkin, braided with gold, laced down the front of the shirt with gold lace, and fastened at the shoulder and elbows by similar lacing; breeches of parti-coloured red and white silk; black velvet slippers, à la François I., embroidered in gold. The mistress of the house, a very handsome person, with dark hair and blue eyes, was in a velvet dress, with a starched collarette, and the black felt hat with black feathers of Helena Formann, Rubens's second wife. Two orchestras had been set up in each suite of rooms, in such a way that, at a given moment, they could both play the same air, and the galop could be heard throughout the five rooms and the hall. At midnight, these five rooms afforded a wonderful spectacle. Everybody had taken up the idea with the exception of those who styled themselves staid men; every one had come in fancy dress; but it was in vain that the serious-minded men pleaded their seriousness; no attention whatever was paid to it; they were compelled to clothe themselves in dominoes of the quietest colours. Véron, a staid person, though he could also be merry, was muffled up in rose colour; Buloz, who was serious and melancholy in temperament, was decked out in sky-blue; Odilon Barrot, who was ultra-serious to solemnness, had obtained a black domino, in virtue of his twofold title of barrister and député; finally, La Fayette, the good, the fashionable and courtly old gentleman, smiling at all this foolishness of youth, had, without offering any opposition to it, put on the Venetian costume. This man had pressed the hand of Washington, had compelled Marat to hide in caves, had struggled against Mirabeau, had lost his popularity in saving the life of the queen, and on 6 October had said to a royalty of ten centuries old: "Bow thyself before that royalty which yesterday was called the people!" This man--who, in 1814, had thrust Napoleon from his throne; who, in 1830, had helped Louis-Philippe to ascend his; who, instead of falling, had gone on growing in power during revolutions--was with us also, simple as greatness, good as strength, candid as genius. He was, in fact, the subject of astonishment and admiration for all those entrancing beings who saw, touched and spoke to him for the first time, who brought back to him his younger days; he looked at them earnestly, gave both his hands to them and responded with the most polite and courteous words to all the pretty speeches the charming queens of the Paris theatres addressed to him. You will recollect having been the favourites of that famous man for one whole night, you--Léontine Fay, Louise Despréaux, Cornélie Falcon, Virginie Déjazet? You recollect your amazement in finding him simple and gentle, coquettish and gallant, witty and deferential, as he had been forty years before at the balls of Versailles and the Trianon? One moment Beauchene sat down by him, and this juxtaposition made a singular contrast: Beauchene wore the Vendéen costume in all its completeness: the hat surrounded with a handkerchief, the Breton jacket, short trousers, gaiters, the bleeding heart on the breast, and the English carbine. Beauchene, who passed for a too Liberal Royalist under the Bourbons of the Elder Branch, passed for too Royalist a Liberal under the Younger Branch. So, General La Fayette, recognising him, said with a charming smile--

"Monsieur de Beauchene, tell me, I beg you, in virtue of what privilege are you the only person here who is not wearing a disguise?"

A quarter of an hour later, both were seated at an écarté table, and Beauchene was playing against the Republican of 1789 and of 1830, with gold bearing the effigy of Henry v.

The sitting-room presented the most picturesque appearance. Mademoiselle Mars, Joanny, Michel Menjaud, Firmin, Mademoiselle Leverd had come in the costumes belonging to _Henri III._ It was the court of the Valois complete. Dupont, the offended soubrette of Molière, the merry soubrette of Marivaux, was in a Boucher shepherdess costume. Georges, who had regained the beauty of her best days, had taken the costume of a Nettuno peasant-girl, and Madame Paradol wore that of Anne of Austria. Rose Dupuis had one like Lady Rochester. Noblet was in harlequin's dress; Javureck was a Turkish slave-girl. Adèle Alphonse, who was making her first public appearance, arriving, I think, from Saint Petersburg, was a young Greek girl. Léontine Fay, an Albanian woman. Falcon, the beautiful Jewess, was dressed as Rebecca; Déjazet, as du Barry; Nourrit, as a court abbé; Monrose, as a soldier of Ruyter; Volnys, as an Armenian; Bocage, as Didier. Allan--who, no doubt, took himself for a serious-minded person like Buloz and Véron--was clad in a white necktie, black coat and trousers; but, over the toilet of a gilded youth, we had insisted on putting a cabbage-green domino. Rossini had taken the costume of Figaro, and vied in popularity with La Fayette. Moyne, our poor Moyne! who had so much talent and who, in spite of his talent, died of hunger, killing himself in the hope that his death would bequeath a pension to his widow--Moyne had taken the costume of Charles IX.; Barye was dressed as a Bengal tiger; Etex, as an Andalusian; Adam, as a doll; Zimmermann, as a kitchen-maid; Plantade, as Madame Pochet; Pichot, as a magician; Alphonse Royer, as a Turk; Charles Lenormand, as a native of Smyrna; Considérant, as a bey of Algiers; Paul de Musset, as a Russian; Alfred de Musset, as a weather-cock; Capo de Feuillide, as a toreador. Eugène Sue, the sixth of the serious men, was in a pistachio domino; Paul Lacroix, as an astrologer; Pétrus Borel, who took the name of Lycanthrope, as Young France; Bard, my companion in the Soissons expedition, as a page of the time of Albert Dürer; Francisque Michel, as a vagabond; Paul Fouché, as a foot-soldier in the Procession of Fools; Eugène Duverger, as Van Dyck; Ladvocat, as Henri XI.; Fournier, as a sailor; Giraud, as a man-at-arms of the eleventh century; Tony Johannot, as Sire de Giac; Alfred Johannot, as young Louis XI.; Menut, as a page of Charles VII.; Louis Boulanger, as a courtier of King John; Nanteuil, as an old soldier of the sixteenth century; Gaindron, as a madman; Boisselot, as a young lord of the time of Louis XII.; Châtillon, as Sentinelli; Ziégler, as Cinq-Mars; Clément Boulanger, as a Neapolitan peasant; Roqueplan, as a Mexican officer; Lépaule, in Highland dress; Grenier, as a seaman; Robert Fleury, as a Chinaman; Delacroix, as Dante; Champmartin, as a pilgrim; Henriquet Dupont, as Ariosto; Chenavard, as Titian; Frédérick Lemaître, as Robert Macaire covered with spangles.

Several droll incidents enlivened the evening. M. Tissot, of the Academy, conceived the notion of making himself up as an invalid; he had scarcely entered, when Jadin came in as an undertaker's man and, lugubrious crêpe on his hat, followed him from room to room, fitting his pace to his and every five minutes repeating the words: _"I am waiting!_" M. Tissot could not stand it and, in half an hour's time, he left. At one time, there were seven hundred persons present. We had supper at three in the morning. The two rooms of the empty flat on my landing were converted into a dining-room.

Wonderful to relate there was enough for everybody to eat and to drink! At nine o'clock in the morning, with music ringing in their heads, they began a final galop in the rue des Trois-Frères, the head of the procession reaching to the boulevard whilst the tail was still frisking in the courtyard of the square. I have often thought since of giving a second ball like that one, but it always seemed to me that it would be quite impossible.

It was about this time that they performed at the Odéon a play which made some sensation, first on account of its own merit, and, also, from the measure that it suggested. This play had for title: _Révolution d'autrefois, ou les Romains chez eux._ The authors were Félix Pyat and Théo.

They had taken for their hero the mad Emperor, whom, six years later, I tried in my turn to put on to the stage--Caligula. There was scarcely any plot in the play; its principal merit was that which was attached to its subtitle: _Les Romains chez eux._ Indeed, this was the first time people had seen the toga worn, and buskins on the feet, and the speech, actions, and eating as had been the case in real life. The subject was the death of Caligula and the succession of Claudius to the throne. Unfortunately for the longevity of the play, it contained a scene which seemed to imply a disrespectful allusion to the leader of the Government. It was the third scene of the last act. One soldier represented Claudius as being perfectly suitable for the Romans, because he was _big, fat_ and _stupid._ It is impossible to describe the effect which this _big, fat_ and _stupid_ produced; there was at that period a terrible reaction against Louis-Philippe. The insurrection of the month of June still brooded upon all spirits. They applied these three epithets to the head of the Government, doing him the justice which he was at any rate to deserve sixteen or seventeen years later. I had not been present at the first performance. I succeeded, after great difficulty, in getting a seat at the second. Take careful note that I am speaking of the Odéon. All Paris would have come to Harel's theatre, for I think he still had the Odéon then, if the play had not been stopped at the third performance. And the most curious thing was that nobody, neither manager nor authors, counted much on the work, which was readily to be seen by the way in which it was mounted. Apart from Lockroy and Provost, the whole play was distributed amongst what is called in theatrical parlance _la troupe de fer-blanc_ ("a fit-up crowd"). Arsène played Chéréas and Moëssard, Claude. Seventeen days later the Porte-Saint-Martin played a piece which was to cause a scandal of another order. It was called: _Dix ans de la vie d'une femme, ou les mauvais conseils._ The leading part was played by Dorval. The play of _Dix ans de la vie d'une femme_--the first manuscript at least--was by a young man of thirty or so, named Ferrier. Harel, while reading it, had seen in it a sequel to _Joueur_ and had coupled Ferrier with Scribe. The result of this alliance was a play fit to make people's hair stand on end, a drama which Mecier or Rétif de la Bretonne would hardly have put their names to!

Something like eighteen years later, we were discussing, at the Council of State, before the commission formed to prepare the law connected with theatres the question of dramatic censorship and theatrical liberty, and, on this head, I heard Scribe attack _immoral literature_ more violently than was usual with him. He demanded a censorship which should be a salutary check to keep talent from the excesses of all kinds to which it was too apt to surrender itself. I allowed myself to interrupt the austere orator, and addressed this question laughingly so that it could be heard all over the room.

"Come, tell us, Scribe, does the drama entitled _Dix ans de la vie d'une femme_ come under the head of moral literature?"

"What?"

I repeated the question.

Scribe replied in the same laughing spirit in which he had been attacked. Read the work again and you will see it would have been difficult for him to reply otherwise. You shall judge for yourselves. We have so often seen our works and those of the Romantic school taxed with immorality by people who uphold M. Scribe as a moral author, that it must really be permitted us to repeat the accusation here and to show, _play in hand,_ how far they pushed the scandal at times in the opposite camp. The wide point of view which the outline of these Memoirs embraces makes us hope that such an exposition may not be looked upon as a digression. At all events, those of our readers who think it irrelevant are quite at liberty to pass over the following chapter.