"Est-ce donc une game à mettre des chrétiens?
Nous nous pressons un peu; vous y tenez, j'y tiens.
Le duc entre et s'en vient vers l'armoire où nous sommes,
Pour y prendre un cigare.... Il y trouve deux hommes!"
For these lines to have their comic effect, they ought to be flung off with the lightheartedness and easy bearing of a king who numbers only nineteen years, and who is in the heyday of prosperity (notice that Charles V. was but nineteen when he was made Emperor of Germany)—well, they were declaimed in the same tones as Mahomet saying—
"Si j'avais à répondre à d'autres que Topyre,
Je ne ferais parler que le Dieu qui m'inspire;
Le glaive et l'Alcoran, dans mes terribles mains,
Imposeraient silence au reste des humains!"
It was perfectly idiotie! so, on my persuasion, and in spite of Michelot's objections, who privately hoped those lines would produce their effect, the erasure was decided on and pitilessly adhered to.
I have said that it was very different with Joanny: he was an old soldier, the soul of honour and openness, who came to the fourth rehearsal without his manuscript, for he already knew his part thoroughly; so if one had to find any fault with him at all, it was that he became blasé, by the thirty to forty general rehearsals, before the first public performance of the piece.
This first representation was an important affair for our party. I had won the Valmy of the literary revolution; Hugo must win the Jemmapes in order that the new school might be well on the way to victory. So, when the time comes to speak of the first reproduction of Hernani, we will give it the full attention it deserves. But for the moment we must be slaves to chronology and pass from Victor Hugo to de Vigny, from Hernani to Othello.
[CHAPTER XIII]
Alfred de Vigny—The man and his works—Harel, the manager at the Odéon—Downfall of Soulié's Christine—Parenthesis about Lassailly—Letter of Harel, with preface by myself and postscript by Soulié—I read my Christine at the Odéon—Harel asks me to put it into prose—First representation of the More de Venise—The actors and the papers