"It is a very funny thing," said Lord ——, as he came into the Café de Paris one morning, many years afterwards; "there are certain days in the week when the Rue Le Peletier seems to be swarming with beggars, and, what is funnier still, they don't take any notice of me. I pass absolutely scot-free."
"I'll bet," remarked Roger de Beauvoir, "that they are playing 'Robert le Diable' or 'Les Huguenots' to-night, and I can assure you that I have not seen the bills."
"Now that you speak of it, they are playing 'Les Huguenots' to-night," replied Lord ——; "but what has that to do with it? I am not aware that the Paris beggars manifest a particular predilection for Meyerbeer's operas, and that they are booking their places on the days they are performed."
"It's simply this," explained De Beauvoir: "both Rossini and Meyerbeer never fail to come of a morning to look at the bills, and when the latter finds his name on them, he is so overjoyed that he absolutely empties his pockets of all the cash they contain. Notwithstanding his many years of success, he is still afraid that the public's liking for his music is merely a passing fancy, and as every additional performance decreases this apprehension, he thinks he cannot be sufficiently thankful to Providence. His gratitude shows itself in almsgiving."
I made it my business subsequently to verify what I considered De Beauvoir's fantastical statement, and I found it substantially correct.
To return to Dr. Véron, who, there is no doubt, did the best he could for "Robert le Diable," to which and to the talent of Taglioni he owed his fortune. At the same time, it would be robbing him of part of his glory did we not state that the success of that great work might have been less signal but for him; both his predecessors and successors had and have still equally good chances without having availed themselves of them, either in the interest of lyrical art or in that of the public.
I compared Dr. Véron just now to Phineas Barnum, and the comparison was not made at random. Dr. Véron was really the inventor of the newspaper puff direct and indirect—of that personal journalism which records the slightest deed or gesture of the popular theatrical manager, and which at the present day is carried to excess. And all his subordinates and co-workers were made to share the advantages of the system, because their slightest doings also reflected glory upon him. An artist filling at a moment's notice the part of a fellow-artist who had become suddenly ill, a carpenter saving by his presence of mind the situation at a critical juncture, had not only his paragraph in next morning's papers, but a whole column, containing the salient facts of his life and career. It was the system of Frederick the Great and of the first Napoléon, acknowledging the daring deeds of their smallest as well as of their foremost aids—with this difference, that the French captain found it convenient to suppress them now and then, and that Dr. Véron never attempted to do so. When the idea of putting down these notes first entered my mind, I looked over some files of newspapers of that particular period, and there was scarcely one between 1831 and 1835 that did not contain a lengthy reference to the Grand Opéra and its director. I was irresistibly reminded of the bulletins the great Napoléon dictated on the battle-field. I have also seen a collection of posters relating to the same brilliant reign at the Opéra. Of course, compared to the eloquent effusions and ingenious attempts of the contemporary theatrical manager to bait the public, Véron's are mere child's play; still we must remember that the art of puffing was in its infancy, and, as such, some of them are worth copying. The public was not so blasé and it swallowed the bait eagerly. Here they are.
"To-morrow tenth performance of ..., which henceforth will only be played at rare intervals.
"To-morrow twentieth performance of ...; positively the last before the departure of M....
"To-morrow seventeenth performance of ...; reappearance of Madame ...