I took the hint, and I never returned there again.
The success of Henri III., therefore, it will be seen, brought in its train all the advantages and all the drawbacks of great successes. I was the fashionable author for the rest of the winter of 1829; I received invitations innumerable, and M. Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld, Minister of the King's Household, wrote me a letter, giving me free entry to all the royal theatres, being shrewd enough to see that, if he did not give me the privilege, I was just the sort of man to take it. Devéria made a lithograph of me; David d'Angers, a medallion. It will be seen that nothing was wanting to complete my triumph, not even the ridiculous side which always accompanies a rising reputation.
Then a crowd of anecdotes were related about me, each more absurd than the last. It was said that, after the representation of Henri III., when the lights in the house had all been put out, a sabbatical dance took place round the bust of Racine (it is set against the wall!), by the light of the dying fires in the green-room, similar to Boulanger's magnificent dance; that the spectral dancers were heard to utter the sacrilegious refrain, "Racine is fallen!" and that even shouts for blood were raised by a young fanatic of the name of Amaury Duval, who demanded the heads of the Academicians—a parricidal cry, since this unfortunate creature was the son of M. Amaury Duval of the Institut, and nephew of M. Alexandre Duval of the Académie française.
Further, a rabid Romantic, to whom God had sent one of the seven plagues of Egypt in punishment for his sins, was accused—and this story might well be true—of saying in a burst of frenzied scratching, "Racine was a regular scoundrel!"
This fanatic was called Gentil.
Stories like these, told by the fireside, were enough, it may well be imagined, to make the hair of all respectable people stand on end, and the Constitutionnel, which has always been the literary and political representative of respectable people, was particularly shocked.
It was from this period that every worthy man gave himself up to hatred of all ideas which did not date back a half-century, and of every author who was not at least sixty years of age—a style of writing which lasted from 1830 to 1850—the vigorous style of hatred to which Alceste refers, and which, we think, eats far more readily into the hearts of weak-minded, wicked and jealous people, than into the hearts of men of goodwill.
People waited in daily expectation of a new St. Bartholomew's Eve, and poor M. Auger, who had just killed himself under such sad circumstances, was congratulated on having escaped a general massacre by means of suicide. So great was the consternation that the whole of the Classical party only produced one play—which was a failure. This was Elisabeth d'Angleterre, by M. Ancelot. For we do not call Casimir Delavigne's Marino Faliero, pompously christened a melodrama in verse, a classical production. The very choice of subject, Marino Faliero, and the imitation of Byron's principal scenes, formed a twofold concession to foreign genius and to modern taste.
Casimir Delavigne, as we have remarked elsewhere, was born fifteen years too soon to take part whole-heartedly in the new school; his style seemed ever hampered, and incessantly vacillating between Voltaire and Byron, Chénier and Shakespeare, never succeeding in clothing his ideas in a definite manner. Still, nothing had been neglected to make Marino Faliero a success. The papers had made much of the ingratitude of the members of the Comédie-Française and of the transfer of M. Ligier to the Porte-Saint-Martin. It was announced that the music of the overture was by Rossini, and the costumes by M. Delaroche. Now M. Delaroche was the exact analogy in painting of what Casimir Delavigne was in literature; both at that time enjoyed far too great a reputation to last, and were destined to see it pale and decrease and almost expire during their life-time. However, Rossini had composed the music, and Delaroche had designed the costumes.
The play was produced on 30 May, and was very successful; but, strange to relate, the author's most elaborately conceived rôle was not the most applauded one, nor did the actor's chief success fall to the share of Ligier or of Madame Dorval: it fell to Gobert, who played the rôle of Israël Bertuccio.