Talma! I knew the past: you could not guess the future. If anyone had told you, Talma, that the hand you had just held was to write sixty to eighty dramas, in each of which you—who were looking out for rôles all your life—would have found one which you would have acted to perfection, you would not have allowed the poor youth to go away thus, blushing at having seen you, proud at having shaken hands with you! But how could you see anything in me, Talma, since I had not discovered it myself?
[CHAPTER IX]
The theatre ticket—The Café du Roi—Auguste Lafarge—Théaulon—Rochefort—Ferdinand Langlé—People who dine and people who don't—Canaris—First sight of Talma—Appreciation of Mars and Rachel—Why Talma has no successor—Sylla and the Censorship—Talma's box—A cab-drive after midnight—The return to Crespy—M. Lefèvre explains that a machine, in order to work well, needs all its wheels—I hand in my resignation as his third clerk
I went back to de Leuven's house hugging the order in my pocket. With the possibility of procuring another by the means of it, I would not have parted with it for five hundred francs! I was filled with pride at the thought of going to the Théâtre-Français, with an order signed "Talma." We lunched.
De Leuven raised great difficulties about going to the play: he had an engagement with Scribe, a meeting with Théaulon, an appointment with I don't know how many other celebrities besides, that night. His father shrugged his shoulders, and de Leuven raised no more objections. It was arranged that we were to go to the Français together; but, as I wanted to see the Musée, the Jardin des Plantes and the Luxembourg, he arranged to meet me at the Café du Roi at seven o'clock. The Café du Roi formed the corner of the rue de Richelieu and the rue Saint-Honoré. We shall have more to say about it later.
After luncheon, I set out by myself and went to the Musée. At six o'clock, I had tramped the tourists' round—that is to say, having entered the Tuileries by the gate of the rue de la Paix, I had passed under the Arch, visited the Musée, gone along the Quays, examined Nôtre-Dame inside and out, made Martin climb up his tree and, under cover of being a stranger—a title which only a blind man or an evilly disposed person could dispute—I had forced my way through the gates of the Luxembourg.
I returned at six o'clock to the hotel, where I found Paillet. Upon my word, we dined well! Our host was a conscientious man, and he gave us soup, a filet with olives, roast beef and potatoes à la maître d'hôtel, the worth of two hares and four partridges, which we absorbed under other guises. I urged Paillet in vain to come to the Français with us: Paillet was formerly a second clerk in Paris; he had friends, or perhaps it would be more truthful to say girl-friends, of other days, to see again; he refused the offer, pressing though it was, and I set off for the Café du Roi, not comprehending how there could be anything more vitally important than to see Talma, or, if one had already seen him, than to see him again. I reached our rendezvous some minutes before Adolphe. Paillet had foreseen that I should probably have some indispensable expenses: he had generously drawn three francs from the common purse and given them to me. After this, a total of twenty francs fifty centimes remained to us.