"Yes, dead!" coldly answers Antony. Elle me résistait: je l'ai assassinée! And he flings his dagger at the husband's feet. The audience gave vent to such cries of terror, dismay and sorrow, that probably a third of the audience hardly heard these words, a necessary supplement to the piece, which, however, without them would be nothing but an ordinary intrigue of adultery, unravelled by a simple assassination. The effect, all the same, was tremendous. They called for the author with frantic cries. Bocage came forward and told them. Then they called for Antony and Adèle again, and both returned to take their share in such an ovation as they had never had, nor ever would have again. For they had both attained to the highest achievement in their art! I flew from my box to go to them, without noticing that the passages were blocked with spectators coming out of their seats. I had not taken four steps before I was recognised; then I had my turn, as the author of the play. A crowd of young persons of my own age (I was twenty-eight), pale, scared, breathless, rushed at me. They pulled me right and left and embraced me. I wore a green coat buttoned up from top to bottom; they tore the tails of it to shreds. I entered the green-room, as Lord Spencer entered his, in a round jacket; the rest of my coat had gone into a state of relics. They were stupefied behind the scenes; they had never seen a success taking such a form before, never before had applause gone so straight from the audience to the actors; and what an audience it was too! The fashionable world, the exquisites who take the best boxes at theatres, those who only applaud from habit, who, this time, made themselves hoarse with shouting so loudly, and had split their gloves with clapping! Crosnier was hidden. Bocage was as happy as a child. Dorval was mad! Oh, good and brave-hearted friends, who, in the midst of their own triumphs, seemed to enjoy my success more even than their own! who put their own talent on one side and loudly extolled the poet and the work! I shall never forget that night; Bocage has not forgotten it either. Only a week ago we were talking of it as though it had happened only yesterday; and I am certain, if such matters are remembered in the other world, Dorval remembers it too! Now, what became of us all after we had been congratulated? I know not. Just as there is around every luminous body a mist, so there was one over the rest of the evening and night, which my memory, after a lapse of twenty-two years, is unable to penetrate. In conclusion, one of the special features of the drama of Antony was that it kept the spectators spell-bound to the final fall of the curtain. As the morale of the work was contained in those six words, which Bocage pronounced with such perfect dignity, "Elle me résistait: je l'ai assassinée!" everybody remained to hear them, and would not leave until they had been spoken, with the following result. Two or three years after the first production of Antony, it became the piece played at all benefit performances; to such an extent that once they asked Dorval and Bocage to act it for the Palais-Royal Theatre. I forget, and it does not matter, for whom the benefit was to be performed. The play met with its accustomed success, thanks to the acting of those two great artistes; only, the manager had been told the wrong moment at which to call the curtain down! So it fell as Antony is stabbing Adèle, and robbed the audience of the final dénoûment. That was not what they wanted: it was the dénoûment they meant to have; so, instead of going they shouted loudly for Le dénoûment! le dénoûment! They clamoured to such an extent that the manager begged the actors to let him raise the curtain again, and for the piece to be concluded.
Dorval, ever good-natured, resumed her pose in the armchair as the dead woman, while they ran to find Antony. But he had gone into his dressing-room, furious because they had made him miss his final effect, and withdrawing himself into his tent, like Achilles; like Achilles, too, he obstinately refused to come out of it. All the time the audience went on clapping and shouting and calling, "Bocage! Dorval!.... Dorval! Bocage!" and threatening to break the benches. The manager raised the curtain, hoping that Bocage, when driven to bay, would be compelled to come upon the stage. But Bocage sent the manager about his business. Meanwhile, Dorval waited in her chair, with her arms hung down, and head lying back. The audience waited, too, in profound silence; but, when they saw that Bocage was not coming back, they began cheering and calling their hardest. Dorval felt that the atmosphere was becoming stormy, and raised her stiff arms, lifted her bent head, rose, walked to the footlights, and, in the midst of the silence which had settled down miraculously, at the first movement she had ventured to make:
"Messieurs" she said, "Messieurs, je lui résistais, il m'a assassinée!" Then she made a graceful obeisance and left the stage, hailed by thunders of applause. The curtain fell and the spectators went away enchanted. They had had their dénoûment, with a variation, it is true; but this variation was so clever, that one would have had to be very ill-natured not to prefer it to the original form.
[CHAPTER VI]
The inspiration under which I composed Antony—The Preface—Wherein lies the moral of the piece—Cuckoldom, Adultery and the Civil Code—Quem nuptiœ demonstrant—Why the Critics exclaimed that my Drama was immoral—Account given by the least malevolent among them—How prejudices against bastardy are overcome
Antony has given rise to so many controversies, that I must ask permission not to leave the subject thus; moreover, this work is not merely the most original and characteristic of all my works, but it is one of those rare creations which influences its age. When I wrote Antony, I was in love with a woman of whom, although far from beautiful, I was horribly jealous; jealous because she was placed in the same position as Adèle; her husband was an officer in the army; and the fiercest jealousy that a man can feel is that roused by the existence of a husband, seeing that one has no grounds for quarrelling with a woman who possesses a husband, however jealous one may be of him. One day she received a letter from her husband announcing his return. I almost went mad. I went to one of my friends employed in the War Office; three times the leave of absence, which was ready to be sent off, disappeared; it was either torn up or burnt by him. The husband did not return. What I suffered during that time of suspense, I could not attempt to describe, although twenty-four years have passed over, since that love departed the way of the poet Villon's "old moons." But read Antony: that will tell you what I suffered!
Antony is not a drama, nor a tragedy! not even a theatrical piece; Antony is a description of love, of jealousy and of anger, in five acts. Antony was myself, leaving out the assassination, and Adèle was my mistress, leaving out the flight. Therefore, I took Byron's words for my epigram, "People said Childe Harold was myself ... it does not matter if they did! "I put the following verses as my preface; they are not very good; I could improve them now: but I shall do nothing of the kind, they would lose their flavour. Poor as they are, they depict two things well enough: the feverish time at which they were composed and the disordered state of my heart at that period.