And M. Fulchiron goes away always smiling, takes his visiting-card in person to M. Viennet, and writes in pencil on it these few words, "Dear colleague, hasten your rehearsals of Achille!"
Thus he leaves his card with M. Viennet's porter, the same porter who informed the said M. Viennet that he was a peer of France; and M. Viennet, who is horribly spiteful, has not bowed to M. Fulchiron since the second card. He treats the seven pencilled words of M. Fulchiron as an epigram and says to everybody—
"Fulchiron may, perhaps, be a Martial, but I swear he is not an Æschylus!"
And M. Fulchiron, his arms hung down, continues to walk abroad and through life, as Hamlet says, never doubting that if he is no Æschylus it is all owing to M. Viennet.[1]
I will close my parenthesis about M. Fulchiron, and return to M. Arnault and Pertinax, which the ungrateful prompter, in spite of the dedicatory epistle to the Guelfes, has never called anything but Père Tignace (Daddy Tignace).
Pertinax, then, was played as some compensation for the disappearance of the Guelfes. Oh! what a pity it is that Pertinax has not been printed! How I would like to have given you specimens of it and then you would understand the merriment of the pit! All I recollect is, that at the decisive moment the Emperor Commodus called for his secretary. I had in front of me a tall man whose broad shoulders and thick locks hid the actor from me every time he happened to be in the line of sight. Unluckily, I did not possess the scissors of Sainte-Foix. By his frantic applause I gathered that this gentleman understood many things which I did not. The upshot of it was that, when the Emperor Commodus called his secretary, the play upon words seemed to me to require an explanation, and I leant over towards the gentleman in front, and, with all the politeness I could command, I said to him—
"Pardon me, monsieur, but it seems to me that this is a pièce à tiroirs!" (Comedy made up of unconnected episodes.)
He jumped up in his stall, uttered a sort of roar but controlled himself. True, the curtain was on the point of falling, and before it had actually fallen our enthusiast was shouting with all his might—"Author!"
Unfortunately, everybody was by no means as eager to know the author as was my neighbour in front. Something like three-quarters of the house—and, perhaps, among these were M. Arnault's own friends—did not at all wish him to be named. Placed in the orchestra between M. de Jouy and Victor Hugo, feeling, on my left, the elbows of Romanticism and, on my right, those of Classicism, if I may be allowed to coin a word, I waited patiently and courageously until they stopped hissing, just as M. Arnault had acted towards me in turning the cold shoulder towards me after Henri III., leaving me the privilege of neutrality.
But man proposes and God disposes. God, or rather the devil, inspired the neighbour to whom I had perhaps put an indiscreet, although very innocent question, to point me out to his friends, and, consequently, to M. Arnault, as the Æolus at whose signal all the winds had been let loose which blew from the four cardinal points of the theatre in such different ways. A quarrel ensued between me and the tall man, a quarrel which instantly made a diversion in the strife that was going on. Next day all the journals gave an account of this quarrel, with their usual impartiality, generosity and accuracy towards me. It was imperative that I should reply. I chose the Journal de Paris in which to publish my reply; it was edited, at that period, by the father of Léon Pillet, a friend of mine. Therefore, the following day, the Journal de Paris published my letter, preceded and followed by a few bitter and sweet lines. This is the exordium. After my letter will come the peroration.