"Mademoiselle Despréaux! Mademoiselle Despréaux!" muttered Mademoiselle Mars. "Ah! indeed that is a good joke!... So it seems you are paying attentions to Mademoiselle Despréaux?"
"I? I have never spoken a word to her in my life!"
"And you definitely and formally ask me to give you back my part?"
"Formally and definitely I ask you to give me back the part."
"Very well; I shall keep the rôle.... I shall play it, and as no one else would play it in Paris, I swear."
"So be it. Keep the rôle; only, do not forget what I have said to you with regard to the courtesy that should obtain between people of our distinction."
And Hugo bowed to Mademoiselle Mars and left her utterly overcome by that haughty dignity to which the authors of the Empire had not accustomed her; they had grovelled before her talent, conscious that, without her, their plays would not bring them in a halfpenny.
From that day, Mademoiselle Mars was cold but polite to Hugo and, as she had promised him, when the night of the first representation came, she played the part to perfection.
Michelot, a very different person from Mademoiselle Mars, was polite almost to the verge of sycophancy; but as he detested us in his heart of hearts, when the hour of the struggle came, instead of fighting loyally and valiantly, as Mademoiselle Mars did, he slyly went over to the enemy and gave the sharpshooters in the pit the hint where, at the most opportune moments, they might find our weakest places. Many liberties were taken with Michelot's part which an actor who had cared less for popular opinion would never have allowed himself to take. As a matter of fact, before the representation, we had waged rude warfare against the risky passages in the part of Don Carlos; I remember among others having very regretfully made Hugo cut out a quatrain to which Michelot seemed to cling tenaciously: I have since discovered why. These four lines were of that charmingly quaint turn which is natural to Hugo and to no one else.
When Ruy Gomez de Sylva goes back to his niece's house and is on the point of taking Don Carlos and Hernani by surprise, the latter, fearful for the reputation of Doña Sol, wishes to hide the king and himself in the very narrow cupboard which Don Carlos was about to vacate, wherein he was sufficiently uncomfortable by himself; but the king rebelled against the suggestion. Is it, indeed, he says—