My Memoirs, Vol. VI, 1832 to 1833

Alexandre Dumas aet area '67.
Preparations for my Fancy Dress Ball—I find that my lodgings are too much after the style of Socrates—My artist-decorators—The question of the supper—I go for provisions to la Ferté-Vidame—View of this capital town of the Canton, by night, in a snowstorm—My nephew's room—My friend Gondon—Roebuck hunting—Return to Paris—I invent a Bank of Exchange before M. Proudhon—The artists at work—The dead
Carnival time was drawing near, and the suggestion Bocage had made that I should give a ball spread abroad throughout the artist world, and was flung back at me on all sides. One of the first difficulties which arose was the question of the smallness of my lodgings—my rooms comprised a dining-room, sitting-room, bedroom and study, which, however adequate in size for a dwelling, were too limited for a party. A ball, given by me, necessitated three or four hundred invitations; and how could I have three or four hundred people in a dining-room, drawing-room, bedroom and study? Happily I bethought myself of a set of four rooms on the same landing, not only empty, but still void of all decoration— except for the mirrors above the chimney-pieces, and the blue-grey paper which covered the walls. I asked the landlord's permission to use this set of rooms for the purpose of the ball I intended to give. It was granted me. Next came the question of decorating the rooms. This was the business of my artist friends. Hardly did they know that I needed them before they came and offered me their services. There were four rooms to decorate, and they shared the task between them. The decorators were no other than Eugène Delacroix, Louis and Clément Boulanger, Alfred and Tony Johannot, Decamps, Grandville, Jadin, Barye, Nanteuil—our first painters, in fact. Ciceri undertook the ceilings. The question arose as to whether the subject should be from a novel or from a play of each of the authors who would be there. Eugène Delacroix undertook to paint King Rodrigo after the defeat of the Guadalèté, a subject taken from the Romancero, translated by Émile Deschamps; Louis Boulanger chose a scene from Lucrèce Borgia ; Clément Boulanger, a scene from the Tour de Nesle ; Tony Johannot, a scene from the Sire de Giac ; Alfred Johannot, a scene from Cinq-Mars ; Decamps promised a Debureau in a cornfield studded with poppies and corn-flowers; Grandville took a panel twelve feet long by eight feet wide, in which he undertook to reproduce all our professions in a picture representing an orchestra of thirty or forty musicians, some clanging cymbals, others shaking Chinese hats, some blowing on horns and bassoons, others scraping on violins and violoncellos. There were, besides, animals at play above each door.