Now listen to what happened: the event I am going to relate was almost a duplicate of the episode in connection with Soulié; and I will answer for it as being unique in the annals of literature.
There were some hundred lines in my play which had to be altered, and which, to make use of an expressive vulgarism, had been empoignés (seized upon) at the first night's performance; they were to be held up to hostile criticism, for they would not fail to be dropped on afresh at the next performance; besides some dozen cuts which had to be made and dressed by skilful and by fatherly hands; this needed doing immediately, that very night, so that the manuscript could be sent back the next morning for the alterations to be made at noon, and the piece acted that same night. Now it was out of the question that I, who had twenty-five guests to entertain, could do it. But Hugo and de Vigny took the manuscript, and, telling me to set my mind at rest, they shut themselves up in a small room, and, whilst the rest of us were eating and drinking and singing, they worked. They toiled for four consecutive hours with the same conscientious energy they would have employed upon their own work; and when they came out at daybreak, finding us all gone to bed and asleep, they left the manuscript, ready for the performance, on the mantelpiece, and, without waking anybody, these two rivals went off arm in arm, like two brothers!
Do you remember that, dear Hugo? Do you recollect that, de Vigny?
We were roused from our lethargic condition next morning by the bookseller Barba, who came to offer me twelve thousand francs for the manuscript of Christine—that is to say, double the sum for which I had sold Henri III. It was, then, unquestionably a success!
[CHAPTER IV]
A passing cab—Madame Dorval in the Incendiaire—Two actresses—The Duc d'Orléans asks for the Cross of the Legion of Honour on my behalf—His recommendation has no effect—M. Empis—Madame Lafond's Salon—My costume as Arnaute—Madame Malibran—Brothers and sisters in Art
The day after, or rather the evening of the second day after my first representation, I was crossing the place de l'Odéon at one o'clock in the morning, passing from the lighted theatre into the darkness of the street, and from the noise of the applause of a crowded house to the silence of an empty square, from intoxication to reflection, from reality to dreams, when a woman's head appeared at the door of a cab calling me by name. I turned round, the cab pulled up and I opened the door.