We were left alone. I, as always, filled with admiration for that naïve, impulsive-natured woman who ever obeyed the first instincts of her heart, or the first dictates of her imagination; she, like a gleeful child who takes an unexpected holiday, or tastes some hitherto unknown pleasure. Then she stood up before me, unaffectedly, in attitudes delightfully natural and, in fittingly sorrowful accents, she went through the whole of her part, without forgetting one salient feature in it, saying each word as she felt it, with striking correctness, bringing out effects, even in the most commonplace of my scenes (those which were put in merely as connecting links with the main ones), that I never thought of when I wrote them, and, every now and then, jumping for joy and clapping her hands and exclaiming—
"Oh! you will see, my good dog, you will see what a grand success we shall make of it!"
Oh! splendid personality, which death thought to obliterate when it struck her down in my arms! I swore the memory of her genius should not be destroyed by death. I will make thee live again, as I promised thee, and, as those who had a right to exact a false version from me have authorised me to tell the truth, I will indeed do so: at every flourish of my pen thou shalt rise from the dead, throbbing with life, with the womanly weaknesses that belonged to thee and the qualities which made thee the artist thou wast; exactly, in short, as God created thee, without veil or mask: to treat such a personality like any ordinary being would be to insult thy genius!
Louise re-entered in a quarter of an hour's time: everything was ready in Merle's room. It was fated that I should from henceforth create my plays at the houses of those for whom they were intended.
At half-past eleven I set myself to work upon my fifth act; by three in the morning it was re-written; by nine o'clock Dorval was clapping her hands rejoicingly and crying—
"How I will act it! 'But I am lost!' Wait a bit; now hear: 'My daughter, I must kiss my daughter!' and then: 'Kill me!' and so on to the end!"
"Then you are quite satisfied?"
"I should think so, indeed! Now we must send and fetch Bocage to breakfast with us and hear it all."
I knew very little of Bocage's talents. I had only seen him act the curé in l'Incendiaire and the sergeant in Napoléon à Schoenbrünn, two rôles which did not at all assist me to imagine him in Antony. I was, therefore, prejudiced against him, and spoke of Lockroy and of Frédéric, of the ease with which we could obtain the services of either of them at the reopening of the theatrical year; but Dorval stuck to her point: she maintained that Bocage was the only actor who could give to Antony the necessary appearance suitable to the part of Antony; so she sent to fetch him.
Bocage was then a handsome fellow of about thirty-four or thirty-five, with dark hair and fine white teeth, and beautiful mysterious eyes, which could express three things essential on the stage—roughness, determination and melancholy: among his physical defects were that he was knock-kneed, his feet were too large, he had a dragging gait and he spoke through his nose. As Dorval's letter was urgent, he rushed off to us at once. We breakfasted, and afterwards I read Antony through again.