It was a piece of bad taste on Lireux's part, because M. Lucas was his superior in every respect, though he would probably have failed where the other succeeded—at least for a while. Save for this mania of saying smart things in and out of season, Lireux was really a good-natured fellow, and we were all glad that he had realized his ambition. The venture looked promising enough at the start. He got an excellent company together, comprising Bocage, Monrose, Gil-Pères, Maubant, Mdlles. Georges and Araldi, Madame Dorval, etc.; and if, like young Bonaparte's troops, they were badly paid and wanted for everything, they worked with a will, because, like Bonaparte, Lireux inspired them with confidence. He, on the other hand, knew their value, and on no pretext would allow them to be ousted from the positions they had honourably won by their talents and hard work. Presumptuous mediocrity, backed either by influence or intrigue, found him a stern adversary; the intriguer got his answer in such a way as to prevent him from returning to the charge. One day an actor of reputed incapacity, Machanette, claimed the title-rôle in Molière's "Misanthrope."
"You have no one else to play Alceste," he said.
"Yes, I have. I have got one of the checktakers," replied Lireux.
Auguste Lireux was one of those managers the race of which began with Harel at the Porte Saint-Martin and Dr. Véron at the Opéra. Duponchel, at the latter house, Montigny at the Gymnase, Buloz and Arsène Houssaye at the Comédie-Francaise, endeavoured as far as possible to follow their traditions of liberality towards the public and their artists, and encouragement given to untried dramatists. It was not Lireux's fault that he did not succeed for any length of time. Of course, there is a ridiculous side to everything. During the terrible cholera visitation of 1832, Harel published a kind of statistics, showing that not a single one of the spectators had been attacked by the plague; but all this cannot blind us to the support given to the struggling playwright, Dumas, in the early part of his career. During the winter of 1841-'42, which was a severe one, Lireux sent foot-warmers to the rare audience that patronized him on a bitterly cold night, "when tragedy still further chills the house"; the little bit of charlatanism cannot disturb the fact of his having given one of the foremost dramatists of the day a chance with "La Cigue." I am alluding to the first piece of Émile Augier.
This kind of thing tells with a general public, more so still with a public composed of generous-minded, albeit somewhat riotous youths like those of the Quartier-Latin in the early forties. Gradually the latter found their way to the Odéon, "sinon pour voir la pièce, alors pour entendre Lireux, qui est toujours amusant"; which, in plain language, meant that come what may they would endeavour to provoke Lireux into giving them a speech.
Flattering as was this resolve on their part to Lireux's eloquence, the means they employed to encompass their end would have made the existence of an ordinary manager a burden to him. But Lireux was not an ordinary manager; he possessed "the gift of the gab" to a marvellous degree: consequently he made it known that he would be happy at any time to address MM. les étudiants without putting them to the expense of apples and eggs on the evening of the performance, and voice-lozenges the next day, if they, MM. les étudiants, would in return respect his furniture and the dresses of his actors. The arrangement worked exceedingly well, and for four years the management and the student part of the audience lived in the most perfect harmony.
Lireux did more than that, he forestalled their possible objections to a doubtful episode in a play. I remember the first night of "Jeanne de Naples." The piece had dragged fearfully. Lireux had made three different speeches during the evening, but he foresaw a riot at the end of the piece which no eloquence on his part would be able to quell. It appears—for we only found this out the next day—that the condemned woman, previous to being led to execution, had to deliver a monologue of at least a hundred and fifty or two hundred lines. The unhappy queen had scarcely begun, when a herculean soldier rushed on the stage, took her into his arms and carried her off by main force, notwithstanding her struggles. It was a truly sensational ending, and the curtain fell amidst deafening applause. It redeemed the piece!
Next day Lireux made his appearance at Tortoni's in the afternoon, and, as a matter of course, the production of the previous evening was discussed.
"I cannot understand," said Roger de Beauvoir, "how a man with such evident knowledge of stagecraft as the author displayed in that dénoûment, could have perpetrated such an enormity as the whole of the previous acts."
Lireux was fairly convulsed with laughter. "Do you really think that was his own invention?" he asked.