"What?"
"Marion Delorme has been performed."
"Ah really?... And here am I hurrying to be present at the first performance!"
"You will not see it ... and you will not have lost much."
It was a matter of course that the editor of a journal so devoted an admirer of Hugo as was the Journal des Débats should speak thus of the great poet.
"Why do I not miss much? Has the play not succeeded?"
"Oh! yes indeed! but coldly, coldly, coldly; and no money in it."
My companion said this with the intense gratification of the critic taking his revenge upon the author, of the eunuch with his foot on the sultan's neck.
"Cold? No money?" I repeated.
"And besides, badly played!"