CHAPTER III

M. Gaillardet's answer and protest--Frédérick and Buridan's part --Transaction with M. Gaillardet--First performance of _La Tour de Nesle_--The play and its interpreters--The day following a success --M. ***--A profitable trial in prospect--Georges' caprice--The manager, author and collaborator

Great was my astonishment when I received an answer from M. Gaillardet, which, instead of being full of gratitude, was a protest. He wrote that the play was his own and belonged only to him; that he had not intended to have, and never would have, a collaborator. I confess I was astounded. The play, as everybody thought, was unactable as it was, and Janin had given it up, openly admitting that he did not know what to do to make it better. I flew off to Harel. I had not asked him to communicate the agreement to me, but had simply believed in his word. I accused him of having deceived me. He thereupon took the contract from his desk and made me read it.

This is what it was, verbally--

"Between MM. Gaillardet and Jules Janin on the one part:

"And M. Harel, manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin, on the other part;

"It is agreed as follows:

"MM. Gaillardet and Jules Janin remit and hand over to M. Harel, a five-act drama entitled _La Tour de Nesle_, to be played at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre.

"M. Harel receives the work and will have it performed immediately.

"Copy made at Paris, 29 March 1832.

_Signed_: "F GAILLARDET. J. JANIN. HAREL"

As MM. Janin and Gaillardet _remitted and handed over_ their drama conjointly, M. Gaillardet must have had a collaborator, and that collaborator was stated to be M. Janin. Now, he always had a collaborator; only, that collaborator did not take half his rights from him, and was not called Janin or anybody else, since he was never named at all. I can but believe that it was the person of Janin who was regretted by M. Gaillardet; for, as we saw, he himself wrote later that Janin had been surreptitiously imposed upon him. Harel had no difficulty in convincing me that it was within his rights to bring me M. Gaillardet's drama, as it had been _remitted_ and _handed over_ to him without embargo. The drama had not been done over again by me; had it been necessary to rewrite the play completely I should certainly never have undertaken the task; but what was done was done straightforwardly and in good faith. The welfare of the theatre, ruined by the riotings and cholera, rested entirely on this work. I was the first to advise that the arrival of M. Gaillardet should be awaited. After the delivery of the first scene, moreover, the play had been put in rehearsal. Now, at the first of these rehearsals, a very curious incident happened. The two principal parts had been given to Georges and Frédérick; but, as I have said, the cholera upset everything. Frédérick, who came to listen to the reading of the first act, and who had carried away the part, was afraid of the cholera; he kept away in the country and, in spite of the notices of the rehearsals, gave no sign of life. Five or six rehearsals took place before he turned up or sent news of himself. He was a man of capricious talent, violent and passionate, and, accordingly, very natural in passionate, violent and capricious characters. He was the French Kean. Harel could neither wait for the end of Frédérick's fear nor for that of the cholera. He decided to engage some one else since Frédérick persisted in staying away; and he looked about him. Bocage was out of an engagement: he entered into negotiations with him. Bocage took the part, promised to rehearse it in spite of all the choleras on the earth, returned home, and began to study it. Next day, he came to the theatre without his manuscript: he knew his first scene. The report of what had occurred reached Frédérick; he rushed up, and I never saw anybody in such a state of vexation as he was. Frédérick is a great actor, an artist of talent and feeling; he was hurt in both these directions. He offered as much as 5000 francs to Bocage if the latter would give up his part, but Bocage refused it, and the part remained his.

Your grief was a fine sight, Frédérick, and I shall never forget it!

The rehearsals continued with Bocage and Mademoiselle Georges. One day, Harel, who then lived in the rue Bergère, sent to fetch me. M. Gaillardet had just arrived, and the following extract represents his state of mind. I will borrow from him direct, so much do I desire to remain neutral in this discussion.

"... I started, and before going home I went dressed as I was in my travelling costume, to see M. Harel.

"'I am ruined!' he said to me. 'I have deceived you, that is the truth. Now what shall you do?'

"'Stop the play.'

"'You will not succeed in doing that; _I shall change the title and play it_; you can attack me for piracy, theft, plagiarism, anything you like. You will obtain 1200 francs indemnity. If you allow it to be played, on the contrary, you will gain 1200 francs, etc. etc.'

"He said the truth, for that is the protection our judges ordinarily allow to an author who has been defrauded."

If I remember rightly, it was in this interval that I arrived. The discussion was violent on both sides, and the explanations were equally violent. We had to leave Harel to hunt up seconds on both sides. Harel, however, intervened, calmed us down, and induced M. Gaillardet to sign a deed by which we acknowledged ourselves joint-authors of _La Tour de Nesle._ We each reserved to ourselves the right to put our names to the play in our complete works. The play was to be played and published under the name of M. Gaillardet alone; but Harel insisted that there should be asterisks after his name. When this deed was signed, the rehearsals went on uninterruptedly.

As the play developed, it assumed great proportions, and I began to believe, with Harel, that it would be a big success. The parts of Marguerite and of Buridan were just made for Georges and for Bocage, who were both splendid in them. Lockroy, who, out of friendship for me, played the part of Gaultier d'Aulnay, was deliciously youthful and loverlike and poetic in it; Provost (as Savoisy), Serres (as Landry) and Delafosse (as Philippe d'Aulnay) completed the characters.

The day of the first performance came: 29 May 1832; I had sent a box ticket to Odilon Barrot, telling him I would dine with him, and reserving a place for myself in his box. The dinner lasted longer than we expected; Madame Odilon Barrot, then young and charming, always a clever and original woman--a rare thing among women--was upon thorns. The great demagogue had no notion anybody could feel so much impatience to see a first performance of a play. We arrived in the middle of the second scene, just in time to hear the tirade of the _grandes dames._

The theatre was in a state of boiling excitement: the audience felt the success of the play, it was in the air, they breathed it. The end of the second scene is terrible in its impressiveness: Buridan leaping from the window into the Seine, Marguerite revealing her bleeding cheek, and exclaiming--" 'Look at thy face and then die,' saidest thou? Let it be done as thou wishest.... Look, and die!" This was all startling and terrible! And, when, after the orgy, the flight, the assassination, the laughter extinguished in groans, the man flung into the river, the lover of a night pitilessly murdered by his royal mistress, the careless and monotonous voice of the night watchman is heard calling, "Three o'clock and a quiet night: Parisians sleep!" the audience burst forth into loud applause.

The third scene is poor, I must candidly admit; it was nearly all written by me, and it was a bit of gagging; still, it does not allow interest to languish; the second had sated the spectators for a time. It will be recollected that, except for an alteration in the staging, the second scene was almost entirely the same as in M. Gaillardet's manuscript. The end of the third scene, however, relieves the beginning; the last scene was entirely concerned with Gaultier d'Aulnay, who comes to demand vengeance for the murder of his brother from Marguerite of Bourgogne, without knowing that the murder had been committed by her. Lockroy's exhibition of grief was magnificent.

The fourth scene was scarcely better than the third; it was the one where Buridan and Marguerite meet in the Orsini tavern, where Marguerite tears from the diary entrusted to her lover the famous page which proves the murder. The principal scene was an improbable one; I had tried my hand at it three or four times before I succeeded. Let me add that I have never been satisfied with it; Georges, who, for her part too, felt it was false, did not play it so well as the others. But the audience was captivated, and in that frame of mind which accepts everything.

The fifth scene was short, spirited, sensitive and full of surprises. The arrest and exit of Buridan made the greatest sensation. Finally, came the famous prison act.

One day, my son asked me--he had not yet written plays at that time--

"What are the first principles of a drama?"

"That the first act be lucid, the last short and, above all, that there be no prison scene in the third!"

When I said that I was ungrateful: I have never seen such an effect as that prison act, and it was marvellously played, besides, by the two actors concerned with it, Who have the whole responsibility of it. Serres (Landry) was delightfully artless and whimsical in it. Bocage, with his great Sicilian eyes, his teeth as white as pearls, and his black beard, was of a physical beauty to which, perhaps, I have only seen one other man attain: Mélingue, one of the most beautiful actors I ever saw on the stage.

After the prison scene, the other might be indifferently either good or bad, for success was assured. This was not unfortunate!

The seventh scene, like the third, was the weakest in the work; it was saved by its wit, and because, all things considered, the spectators, like Harel, thought King Louis, the headstrong, was _a droll figure._

Finally came the fifth act, which had so much frightened Harel. It was divided into two scenes: the eighth, of a diabolical humour; the ninth, which, for appalling dramatic character might be compared with the second. Something about it reminded one of the ancient fatalism of Sophocles, blended with the scenic terrors of Shakespeare. So its success was enormous, and the name of M. Frédérick Gaillardet was proclaimed amidst loud applause.

Madame Odilon Barrot was in ecstasy, and enjoyed herself like a schoolgirl. Odilon Barrot, little accustomed to melodramatic theatrical displays, was astounded that emotion could be carried so far. Of course, as in the case of _Richard Darlington,_ Harel came and made me all sorts of offers if I would consent to have my name mentioned. I had refused in _Richard,_ where nothing pledged me to it; I refused more firmly still in the case of _La Tour de Nesle_, where I was bound both by a promise of honour and a written one.

I returned home, I vow it, without a single feeling of regret. It was, however, the first performance of a play which was to hold the bills for nearly eight hundred times! Next day, several of my friends, who knew the part I had taken in _La Tour de Nesle,_ came to pay me their compliments. Amongst these was one of my best friends, Pierre Collin.

"Do you know what Harel has done?" he said to me as he was coming in.

"What has he done?"

"What he has put on the bills?"

"No."

"Instead of proceeding as in mathematics, from the known to the unknown, he has proceeded from the unknown to the known."

"I do not understand."

"Instead of putting: 'MM. Gaillardet et ***,' he has put et 'MM. *** et Gaillardet.'"

"Oh, the rascal!" I exclaimed, "he will cause me a fresh quarrel with M. Gaillardet; and, what is worse, this time M. Gaillardet will be in the right." I took up my hat and walking-stick.

"Where are you going?"

"I am going to Harel. Will you come with me?"

"I must go to my office."

"Then, quick, call a carriage! I will drop you there in passing."

I was at Harel's five minutes later.

"Ah! there you are!" he said to me; "you have learnt the trick I have played off on Gaillardet?"

"It is because I have learnt of it that I have hurried here.... It is very wrong of you, my dear friend!"

"Really! Why? Was it not agreed that the asterisks should precede M. Gaillardet's name? It is your right: you are four years his senior in theatrical matters."

"But it is the custom for asterisks to follow a name."

"Custom is a fool, my dear; we will either change it or put some sense into it; we both have enough and to spare when the devil takes us!"

"Say you have quite enough by yourself."

"Ah! You would betray me? You would go against me?"

"Oh no, I remain neutral; only, if M. Gaillardet calls on me as a witness, I shall be obliged to tell the truth."

"My dear fellow, we have a great success already; with a touch of scandal we shall have a tremendous success.... If M. Gaillardet objects, our scandal is to hand. He will then have done something for the play at any rate."

"Harel!"

"Oh! you are really delightful! You think it is enough to make masterpieces and to say, 'I did not do them.' Very well, whether it suits you or not, all Paris shall know that you did."

"Go to the devil! I wish I had never touched your cursed play.... Listen, some one is ringing your bell; I bet it is M. Gaillardet."

Harel opened his door and listened a moment.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"I do not know, sir," the servant answered; "it is a man carrying a stamped paper."

"A stamped paper?... This is something of a novelty! Show him in."

The man was a sheriff's officer who came on behalf of M. Gaillardet, and who, like Haman for Mardocheus, served as a _herald to his fame._ The stamped document was a summons before the Tribunal of Commerce, seeking to force M. Harel to remove the unlucky asterisks.

"Good!" I cried, "this is a joint affair! I shall find the same when I get back home. You were an idiot to play this prank!"

Harel rubbed his hands together until all his joints cracked.

"A fine lawsuit," he said, "an excellent lawsuit! I only ask two such per year for six years and my fortune is made!"

"But you will lose the case!"

"I know that, very well."

"In that case it will be a bad lawsuit."

"First of all, I would have you to know that a lawsuit is not necessarily a bad one because one may lose it; and if I lose it I shall appeal."

"But you will lose it then, for I tell you I shall be against you."

"You will say that you have nothing to do with the play, I suppose?"

"I shall say that I must not be named."

"Meanwhile, you will be mentioned at the Tribunal of Commerce, at the Court of Appeal, by M. Gaillardet's solicitor and by your own; the newspapers will copy the law proceedings, the three asterisks will have made the public talk when placed before the name, and will do so if they are put after it; the MSS. will be put in, M. Gaillardet's, Janin's and yours.... My dear fellow, I only reckoned upon a hundred performances; now I will bet on two hundred."

"May the devil take you!"

"Will you not stay to dinner with us?"

"Thanks."

"Yes, indeed.... Does not Georges bless you?"

"Is she satisfied with her success?"

"Delighted! Although you have rather sacrificed her part to Bocage, you will admit."

"Good! is she also going to bring an action against me?"

"She has a good mind to do so, and it might, indeed, happen, unless you promise to write a play for her."

"Oh! I promise her that, if that is all she wants."

"She has an idea."

"It is not divorce?" Georges had been teasing me for a long time to write her a play upon the Emperor's divorce.

"No, don't be anxious!"

I went up and saw her. She was as beautiful as the conquering Semiramis. We greeted each other as cordially as we always do when we meet. I told her the whole story about M. Gaillardet, and I was grieved to see that she thought Harel entirely in the right.

"Well, all right," I said; "let us not talk any more about it.... By the bye, what is this he tells me?"

"Harel?"

"Yes."

"Some tomfoolery."

"Exactly.... He tells me that you had an idea in your mind."

"Insolent man!"

"An idea for a play, be it understood. _Peste!_ You have something much better than ideas: you have your caprices."

"Not with you, in any case!"

"That is just what I complain of."

I went on my knees before her and kissed her lovely hands.

"Tell me then, Georges, shall we be held ridiculous in the eyes of posterity, for having come in contact with one another without the assistance of which Descartes talks."

"Be quiet, you big animal! and go and talk such nonsense to your dear Dorval."

"Oh! Dorval!... poor Dorval, I have not seen her for an age!"

"Good! when you have been living door to door with her."

"Precisely so! Formerly we had only one door between us! Now we have a wall."

"A partition only!"

"Bravo! Ah! but let us hear your idea."

"Well, my dear, I have played princesses and I have played queens ...

"And even empresses!"

"Stop, that is for you to do." She lifted up to me her beautiful hand, which I stopped to kiss in its passage.

"And even empresses!" I repeated.

"All right, I want to play a woman of the people."

"Yes! I know you! You would play that in a velvet dress and all your diamonds."

"No! I tell you, I mean a woman of the people, a beggar-woman!"

"Bah! Come forward as far as the footlights, stretch your hand out to the audience, and there would be no more play, or rather no more beggar-woman."

"What pasture have you been browsing on to-day?"

"On one which grew in your dressing-room one day when Harel shut me up to write _Napoléon."_

"Come, be quiet with you, and write me my play."

"A beggar-woman.... We have Jane Shore; will that do for you?"

"No; Jane Shore is a princess; I want a woman belonging to the people, I tell you."

"I do not know how to draw such women."

"You aristocrat!"

"Come, have you a subject?"

"I know some one who has one."

"Send me that some one."

"I will."

"Who is it?"

"Anicet."

"This happens most luckily, for I owe him a play."

"How is that?"

"We did _Térésa_ together, and my name appeared; we will do your _Mendiante_ together, and his name shall be on it."

"Oh! it is a regular craze with you not to give your own name? _Richard! La Tour de Nesle!_ You will end by only putting your name to bad dramas."

"Do you mean that in connection with _Catherine Howard?_"

"No, I said it ... at a venture."

Some one knocked at the door.

"Good!" she continued, "here is Harel coming to worry us."

"Let us see. Come in; what do you want?"

"I bring news from M. Gaillardet."

"A second writ?"

"No, the copy of a letter which will be in all the newspapers to-morrow."

"Oh! leave us in peace!" said Georges.

"Wait then, till I have read it you."

"My dear Harel, I tell you you are disturbing us greatly."

"I do not think so!" he said.

Indeed, I was still on my knees in front of Georges.

"Listen."

He read--

"30 _May_

_"To the Editor._

"DEAR SIR,--Yesterday I was alone named as the author of _La Tour de Neste,_ to-day my name is on the playbills, preceded by two M's, and * * *. It is an error or a piece of malice of which I will neither be the victim nor the dupe. In any case, will you please announce that, in my contract as on the stage, and as, I trust, on to-morrow's bills, I am and intend to be the sole author of _La Tour de Neste._ F. GAILLARDET"

"There!" said I to Harel, "that is flat."

Harel unfolded a second letter.

"Here is my reply," he said.

"My dear man, the only answer you can make is to change the position of the stars."

"That does not enter into my planetary system.... Listen."

And he read--

"1 _June_

_"To the Editor._

"This is my answer to the extraordinary letter from M. Gaillardet, who claims to be the sole author of _La Tour de Neste._ The play, entirely as far as style is concerned, and nineteen-twentieths, at least, as regards its composition, belongs to a celebrated collaborator who, for private reasons, did not wish to give his name after the immense success it received. Scarcely anything left is of the original work of M. Gaillardet. I assert this and will prove it, if need arises, by comparison of the MS. compared with that of M. Gaillardet.--Yours etc.

"HAREL"

On 2 June, the newspapers contained this reply from M. Gaillardet--

"_To the Editor._

"By way of an answer to M. Harel, please be so good as to insert the enclosed letter, written to me by the _celebrated collaborator_ of whom M. Harel speaks, which I received at Tonnerre, where I first learnt that I had a collaborator.

F. GAILLARDET"

My letter followed. I must confess the insertion of my letter surprised me. It was, to say the least, tactless on M. Gaillardet's part, for he thereby made an adversary of a man who wished to remain neutral. It was no longer possible for me to keep silent; the newspapers, always rather malevolent towards me, began to attack me, and I had had a quarrel the day before with M. Viennet of the _Corsaire_ in the very office of that newspaper, which very nearly ended in a duel. Furthermore, I felt vaguely that, before this matter was ended, there would be swordplay or pistol practice to be given or received. After all the mortifications the work had cost me, I should much prefer that this should be with M. Gaillardet than with any other person. In addition to all this, since my attack of cholera, I was excessively weak. I could not eat, and I was attacked every night by feverishness, which put me into an abominable temper. So I seized my pen and, smarting under the disagreeable impression that I had just received from the publishing of my letter, I replied--

_"To the Chief Editor of the Newspaper._

"SIR,--Allow me first of all to thank you for the insertion of the letter I wrote to M. Gaillardet, reproduced in your yesterday's issue. It will be a proof to the public mind of the delicacy which I desired to exercise in my dealings with this young man; but that delicacy has, it seems to me, been very ill appreciated: the only two conversations I had with him proved to me that he could not understand it.[1] But how could M. Gaillardet not be conscious that, at least, the insertion of this letter would necessitate a reply on my part, that it could only be one disadvantageous to himself, and that, hunting for ridicule with a lantern, he could not fail to be more fortunate than Diogenes? Very well, the answer which he compels me to make is as follows--

"'I have not read M. Gaillardet's MS.; it only left M. Harel's hands for a second and it was returned to him at once; for, in consenting to write a work under a title and about a known situation, I was afraid of being influenced by a work anterior to my own, and thus lose the freshness which is essential to me before I can do such a piece of work.'

"Now, since M. Gaillardet thinks the public is not sufficiently informed about this sorry business, let him convoke the arbitration of three men of letters, _of his own choice,_ and come before them with his MS., while I will with mine; they shall then judge on which side is the delicacy of feeling and on which the ingratitude.

"In order that I may be faithful to the extreme limits of the conditions which I self-sacrificingly imposed upon myself in the letter I wrote to M. Gaillardet, allow me, sir, not to give my name here, any more than I have done on the bills.

"THE AUTHOR OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF _La Tour de Nesle_"

Henceforth, it will be understood, war was declared between M. Gaillardet and myself.

[Footnote 1: I am obliged, in order not to alter the text, to reproduce the letters in their entirety; only, I now disapprove of every wounding expression contained in mine.]