"Portier, je veux
De tes cheveux!"
The joke was continued the next day; we sent everybody we knew to ask Master Pipelet for a lock of his hair, so that he eventually only answered the bell with horror, whilst to no purpose whatever did he remove from his door the traditional notice—
Address yourself to the Porter.
On the following Sunday, Eugène Sue and Desmares decided to give the poor devil a serenade on a grand scale: they entered the courtyard on horseback, with guitars in their hands, and began singing the persecuting air. But, as we said, it was Sunday, and, the householders being away in the country, the porter quite expected they would try to embitter his Sabbath as on other days, not allowing him the rest God had conceded to Himself. Having informed every servant throughout the house, he slipped behind the singers, shut the street door and made a pre-arranged signal, whereupon five or six servants ran to his assistance, and the troubadours were compelled to turn their musical instruments into weapons of defence: they came away with nothing but the necks of their guitars in their hands. Nobody ever knew the details of this fight, which must have been a terrible one; the combatants kept it to themselves; but it was known to have happened; and the porter of the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin was voted a literary outlaw. From that moment the wretched man's life became a premature hell to him: even his night's rest was not respected; for every belated littérateur had to take an oath to return home by way of the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, were he living even at the Barrière du Maine. The persecution endured for over three months; at the end of that time a new face appeared to answer the accustomed demand: Pipelet's wife came weeping to the grating to say that her husband had fallen a victim to this persecution and had been carried off to a hospital with an attack of brain fever. The unlucky man was in a delirium and, in his raving, repeated incessantly, over and over again, the refrain that had cost him his reason and his health. This, then, is the real truth about the celebrated persecution of the Pipelets, which made a great sensation during the years 1829 to 1830.
Now let us return to Christine. When the play was returned from the Censorship it was rehearsed with a will. Romanticism, which had taken possession of the Théâtre-Français, had just spread to the other side of the Seine and had turned aside from the Academy—as in the case of a fortress which a great general scorns to attack at a time of invasion—and threatened to carry the Odéon by assault.
It was creating quite a revolution in the Latin quarter. Further, in order to give more effect to the next performance, Harel constantly suspended the play—a means of advertisement and a way of publishing hitherto quite unknown.
On the morning of the general rehearsal I received a line from Soulié; it was, with the exception of the slight correspondence previously mentioned and the sending of places for Roméo et Juliette, the only sign of his existence he had given me for a year. He asked me for a pass for this rehearsal. I sent him at once a pass for himself and any of his friends who might wish to accompany him. The rehearsal took place the same night. Now, in those days, general rehearsals were actual performances of the play as it would be presented finally. Friends were not yet sick of it, success had not made them indifferent or jealous, and there really seemed to be a general interest taken in the outcome of some of them. The cause we were upholding was that of every obscure aspirant who hoped to become famous some day; and they would share a good deal of the influence acquired by us, in order to make their path more sure and brilliant. Egotism made them devotees. So the general rehearsal of Christine was an enthusiastic success.
I left the orchestra after the fifth act, and went to pay my respects to Soulié. He was greatly moved and held out his arms to me. I embraced him with deep emotion; it had distressed me to be on cool terms with a man whom I loved and whose talent I admired more than others did, because, better than others, I appreciated that talent.
"Ah!" said he, "you were certainly well advised in writing your Christine alone. It is an admirable piece of work, but parts of it suffer as regards composition; that will come. Some day you will be our leading dramatist, and we your humble servants."
"Come now, my dear friend," I said, "you must be mad to say such things!"