"Good!" replied Dorval, returning to her place, "I will be standing, and will sit down."
The rehearsal was finished; Alfred de Vigny had been present, and given me some good hints. I had made Antony an atheist, he made me obliterate that blot in the part. He predicted a grand success for me. We parted, he persisting in his opinion, I shaking my head dubiously. Bocage led me into his dressing-room to show me his costume. I say costume, for although Antony was clad like ordinary mortals, in a cravat, frock-coat, waistcoat and trousers, there had to be, on account of the eccentricity of the character, something peculiar in the set of the cravat and shape of the waistcoat, in the cut of the coat and in the set of the trousers. I had, moreover, given Bocage my own ideas on the subject, which he had adapted to perfection; and, seeing him in those clothes, people understood from the very first that the actor did not represent just an ordinary man. It was settled that the piece should be definitely given on 3 May; I had then only two more rehearsals before the great day. The preceding ones had been sadly neglected by me; I attended the last two with extreme assiduity. When Madame Dorval reached the sentence which had troubled her for long, she kept her word: she was standing and sank into an armchair as though the earth had given way under her feet, and exclaimed, "Then I am lost!" in such accents of terror that the few persons who were present at the rehearsal broke into cheers. The final general rehearsal was held with closed doors; it is always a mistake to introduce even the most faithful of friends to a general rehearsal: on the day of the performance they tell the plot of the play to their neighbours, or walk about the corridors talking in loud voices, and creaking their boots on the floor. I have never taken much credit to myself for giving theatre tickets to my friends for the first performance; but I have always repented of giving them tickets of admission for a general rehearsal. Against this it will be argued that spectators can give good advice: in the first place, it is too late to act upon any important suggestion at general rehearsals; then, those who really offer valuable advice, during the course of rehearsals, are the actors, firemen, scene-shifters, supernumeraries and everybody, in fact, who lives by the stage, and who know the theatre much better than all the Bachelors of Arts and Academicians in existence. Well, then! my theatrical world had predicted Antony's success, scene-shifters, firemen craning their necks round the wings, actors and actresses and supers going into the auditorium and watching the scenes in which they didn't appear. The night of production had come.
[CHAPTER V]
The first representation of Antony—The play, the actors, the public—Antony at the Palais-Royal—Alterations of the dénoûment
The times were unfavourable for literature: all minds were turned upon politics, and disturbances were flying in the air as, on hot summer evenings, swifts fly overhead with their shrill screams, and black-winged bats wheel round. My piece was as well put on as it could be; but, except for the expenditure of talent which the actors were going to make, M. Crosnier had gone to no other cost; not a single new carpet or decoration, not even a salon was renovated. The work might fail without regret, for it had only cost the manager the time spent over the rehearsals.
The curtain rose, Madame Dorval, in her gauze dress and town attire, a society woman, in fact, was a novelty at the theatre, where people had recently seen her in Les Deux Forçats, and in Le Joueur: so her early scenes only met with a half-hearted success; her harsh voice, round shoulders and peculiar gestures, of which she so often made use that, in the scenes which contained no passionate action, they became merely vulgar, naturally did not tell in favour of the play or the actress. Two or three admirably true inflections, however, found grace with the audience, but did not arouse its enthusiasm sufficiently to extract one single cheer from it. It will be recollected that Bocage has very little to do in the first act: he is brought in fainting, and the only chance he has for any effect is where he tears off the bandage from his wound, uttering, as he faints away for the second time: "And now I shall remain, shall I not?" Only after that sentence did the audience begin to understand the piece, and to feel the hidden dramatic possibilities of a work whose first act ended thus. The curtain fell in the midst of applause. I had ordered the intervals between the acts to be short. I went behind the scenes myself to hurry the actors, managers and scene-shifters. In five minutes' time, before the excitement had had time to cool down, the curtain went up again. The second act fell to the share of Bocage entirely. He threw himself vigorously into it, but not egotistically, allowing Dorval as much part as she had a right to take; he rose to a magnificent height in the scene of bitter misanthropy and amorous threatening, a scene, by the bye, which—except for that of the foundlings—took up pretty nearly the whole act. I repeat that Bocage was really sublime in these parts: intelligence of mind, nobleness of heart, expression of countenance,—the very type of the Antony, as I had conceived him, was presented to the public. After the act, whilst the audience were still clapping, I went behind to congratulate him heartily. He was glowing with enthusiasm and encouragement, and Dorval told him, with the frankness of genius, how delighted she was with him. Dorval had no fears at all. She knew that the fourth and fifth acts were hers, and quietly waited her turn. When I re-entered the theatre it was in a state of excitement; one could feel the air charged with those emotions which go to the making of great success. I began to believe that I was right, and the whole world wrong, even my manager; I except Alfred de Vigny, who had predicted success. My readers know the third act, it is all action, brutal action; with regard to violence, it bears a certain likeness to the third act of Henri III., where the Duc de Guise crushes his wife's wrist to force her to give Saint-Mégrin a rendez-vous in her own handwriting. Happily, the third act at the Théâtre-Français having met with success, it made a stepping-stone for that at the Porte-Saint-Martin. Antony, in pursuit of Adèle, is the first to reach a village inn, where he seizes all the post-horses to oblige her to stop there, chooses the room that suits him best of the only two in the house, arranges an entrance into Adèle's room from the balcony, and withdraws as he hears the sound of her carriage wheels. Adèle enters and begs to be supplied with horses. She is only a few leagues from Strassburg, where she is on her way to join her husband; the horses taken away by Antony are not to be found: Adèle is obliged to spend the night in the inn. She takes every precaution for her safety, which, the moment she is alone, becomes useless, because of the opening by the balcony, forgotten in her nervous investigations. Madame Dorval was adorable in her feminine simplicity and instinctive terrors. She spoke as no one had spoken, or ever will speak them, those two extremely simple sentences: "But this door will not shut!" and "No accident has ever happened in your hotel, Madame?" Then, when the mistress of the inn has withdrawn, she decides to go into her bedroom. Hardly had she disappeared before a pane of the window falls broken to atoms, an arm appears and unlatches the catch, the window is opened and both Antony and Adèle appear, the one on the balcony of her window, the other on the threshold of the room. At the sight of Antony, Adèle utters a cry. The rest of the scene was terrifyingly realistic. To stop her from crying out again, Antony placed a handkerchief on Adèle's mouth, drags her into the room, and the curtain falls as they are both entering it together. There was a moment of silence in the house. Porcher, the man whom I have pointed out as one of our three or four pretenders to the crown as the most capable of bringing about a restoration, was charged with the office of producing my restoration, but hesitated to give the signal. Mahomet's bridge was not narrower than the thread which at that moment hung Antony suspended between success and failure. Success carried the day, however. A great uproar succeeded the frantic rounds of applause which burst forth in a torrent. They clapped and howled for five minutes. When I have failures, rest assured I will not spare myself; but, meanwhile, I ask leave to be allowed to tell the truth. On this occasion the success belonged to the two actors; I ran behind the theatre to embrace them. No Adèle and no Antony to be found! I thought for a moment that, carried away by the enthusiasm of the performance, they had resumed the play at the words, "Antony lui jette un mouchoir sur la bouche, et remporte dans sa chambre," and had continued the piece. I was mistaken: they were both changing their costumes and were shut in their dressing-rooms. I shouted all kinds of endearing terms through the door.