It must be confessed that a terrible conspiracy, that of silence, was on foot against Chateaubriand, who had not the strength to bear it. He hoped that the echo of his great reputation, which once upon a time had nearly as much weight in the world as Napoléon's, would spread abroad. The newspapers made a great stir about this voluntary exile. Béranger made it the subject of one of his short poems, and he, Voltairian and Liberal, addressed lines to the author of Atala, René and the Martyrs, a Catholic and Royalist. This poem of Béranger's it will be remembered began with these four lines—
"Chateaubriand, pourquoi fuir la patrie,
Fuir notre amour, notre encens et nos soins?
N'entends-tu pas la France qui s'écrie:
'Mon beau ciel pleure une étoile de moins!'"
Chateaubriand had the good taste to reply in prose. The best verses are very far below Béranger's worst. It was one of the obsessions of Chateaubriand's life that he made such bad verses and he persisted in making them. He shared this eccentricity with Nodier: these two geniuses of modern prose were haunted by the demon of rhyme. Happily people will forget Moïse and the Contes en vers, just as one has forgotten that Raphael played the violin. While Béranger sang, and Chateaubriand retired to Lucerne,—where eight or ten months later, I was to help him to feed his chickens,—the day for the first performance of Charles VII. arrived, 20 October.
I have already said what I thought of the merits of my play: as poetry, it was a great advance upon Christine; as a dramatic work it was an imitation of Andromaque, the Cid and the Camargo. Ample justice was done to it: it had a great success and did not bring in a sou! Let us here state, in passing, that when it was transferred to the Théâtre-Français, it was performed twenty or twenty-five times, and made a hundred louis at each performance. The same thing happened later with regard to the Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr. That comedy, represented in 1842 or 1843 with creditable but not every remunerative success—although it then had Firmin, Mesdemoiselles Plessy and Anaïs as its exponents—had, at its revival, six years later, twice the number of performances which it had had when it was a novelty, making an incredible amount of money during its odd Saint Martin's summer. But let us return to Charles VII. We have mentioned what success the work met with; a comic incident very nearly compromised it. Delafosse, one of the most conscientious comedians I ever knew, played the part of Charles VII. As I have said, Harel did not want to go to any expense over the play (this time, indeed, he acted like a wise man); to such a degree that I had been obliged, as is known, to borrow a fifteenth-century suit of armour from the Artillery Museum; this cuirass was, on a receipt from me, taken to the property room at the Odéon; there, the theatrical armourer had occasion,—not to clean it, for it shone like silver,—but to oil the springs and joints in order to bring back the suppleness which they had lost during a state of rigidity that had endured for four centuries. By degrees, the obliging cuirass was, indeed, made pliable, and Delafosse, whose shell at the proper moment it was to become, was able, although in an iron sheath, to stretch out his legs and move his arms. The helmet alone declined all concessions; its vizor had probably not been raised since the coronation of Charles VII.; and, having seen such a solemnity as this it absolutely refused to be lowered. Delafosse, a conscientious man, as I have already indicated, looked with pain upon the obstinacy of his vizor, which, during the whole time of his long war-like speech did him good service by remaining raised, but which, when the speech was ended, and he was going off the stage, would give him when lowered a formidable appearance, upon which he set great store. The armourer was called and, after many attempts, in which he used in turn both gentle and coercive measures, oil and lime, he got the wretched vizor to consent to be lowered. But, when this end was achieved, it was almost as difficult a task to raise it again as it had been to lower it. In lowering, it slipped over a spring, made in the head of a nail, which, after several attempts, found an opening, resumed its working, and fixed the vizor in such a way that neither sword nor lance-thrusts could raise it again; this spring had to be pressed with a squire's dagger before it could be pushed back again into its socket, and permit the vizor to be raised. Delafosse troubled little about this difficulty; he went out with lowered vizor and his squire had plenty of time to perform the operation in the green room. Had Henri II. but worn such a vizor he would not have died at the hand of Montgomery! Behold on what things the fate of empires depend! I might even say the same about the fate of plays! Henri II. was killed because his vizor was raised. Charles VII. avoided this because his vizor remained lowered. In the heat of delivery, Delafosse made so violent a gesture that the vizor fell of itself, yielding, doubtless, to the emotion that it felt. This may have been its manner of applauding. Whatever the cause, Delafosse suddenly found himself completely prevented from continuing his discourse. The lines began in the clearest fashion imaginable; they were emphasised most plainly, but ended in a lugubrious and unintelligible bellowing. The audience naturally began to laugh. It is said that it is impossible for our closest friend to refrain from laughter when he sees us fall. It is no laughing matter, I can tell you, when a play fails, but my best friends began to laugh. Luckily, the squire of King Charles VII., or, rather, Delafosse's super (whichever you like), did not forget on the stage the part he played behind the scenes; he rushed forward, dagger in hand, on the unfortunate king; the public only saw in the accident that had just happened a trick of the stage and, in the action of the super, a fresh-incident. The laughter ceased and the audience remained expectant. The result of the pause was that in a few seconds the vizor rose again, and showed Charles VII., as red as a peony and very nearly stifled. The play concluded without any other accident. Frédérick-Lemaître was angry with me for a long time because I did not give him the part of Yaqoub; but he was certainly mistaken about the character of that personage, whom he took for an Othello. The sole resemblance between Othello and Yaqoub lies in the colour of the face; the colour of the soul, if one may be allowed to say so, is wholly different. I should have made Othello—and I should have been very proud of it if I had!—jealous, violent, carried away by his passions, a man of initiative and of will-power, leader of the Venetian galleys; an Othello with flattened nose, thick lips, prominent cheek-bones, frizzy hair; an Othello, more negro than Arab, should I have given to Frédérick. But my Othello, or, rather, my Yaqoub was more Arab than negro, a child of the desert, swarthy complexioned rather than black, with straight nose, thin lips, and smooth and flat hair; a sort of lion, taken from his mother's breast and carried off from the red and burning sands of the Sahara to the cold and damp flagstones of a château in the West; in the darkness and cold he becomes enervated, languid, poetical. It was the fine, aristocratic and rather sickly nature of Lockroy which really suited the part. And, according to my thinking, Lockroy played it admirably. The day after the first performance of Charles VII. I received a good number of letters of congratulation. The play had just enough secondary merit not to frighten anybody, and brought me the compliments of people who, whether unable or unwilling to pay them any longer to Ancelot, felt absolutely obliged to pay them to somebody.
Meanwhile, the Théâtre-Français was preparing a play which was to cause a much greater flutter than my poor Charles VII. This was the Reine d'Espagne, by Henri de Latouche. M. de Latouche,—to whom we shall soon have to devote our attention in connection with the appearance upon our literary horizon of Madame Sand,—was a sort of hermit, who lived at the Vallée-aux-Loups. The name of the hermitage quite sufficiently describes the hermit. M. de Latouche was a man of genuine talent; he has published a translation of Hoffmann's Cardillac, and a very remarkable Neapolitan novel. The translation—M. de Latouche obliterated the name on his stolen linen—was called Olivier Brusson; the Neapolitan novel was called Fragoletta. The novel is an obscure work, badly put together, but certain parts of it are dazzling in their colour and truth; it is the reflection of the Neapolitan sun upon the rocks of Pausilippe. The Parthenopean Revolution is described therein in all its horrors, with the bloodthirsty and unblushing nakedness of the peoples of the South. M. de Latouche had, besides, rediscovered, collected and published the poetry of André Chénier. He easily made people believe that these poems were if not quite all his own, at least in a great measure his. We will concede that M. Henri de Latouche concocted a hemistich here and there where it was wanting, and joined up a rhyme which the pen had forgotten to connect, but that the verses of André Chénier are by M. de Latouche we will not grant!
We only knew M. de Latouche slightly; at the same time, we do not believe that there was so great a capacity for the renunciation of glory on his part as this, that he gave to André Chénier, twenty-five years after the death of the young poet, that European reputation from which he was able to enrich himself. Yet M. de Latouche wrote very fine verse; Frédérick Soulié, who was then on friendly terms with him, told me at times that his poetry was of marvellous composition and supreme originality. In short, M. de Latouche, a solitary misanthrope, a harsh critic, a capricious friend, had just written a five-act prose comedy upon the most immodest subject in France and Spain; not content with shaking the bells of Comus, as said the members of the Caveau, he rang a full peal on the bells of the theatre of the rue de Richelieu. This comedy took for its theme the impotence of King Charles II., and for plot, the advantage accruing to Austria supposing the husband of Marie-Louise d'Orléans produced a child, and the advantage to France supposing his wife did not have one. As may be seen it was a delicate subject. It must be admitted that M. de Latouche's redundant imagination had found a way of skating over the risks of danger which threatened ordinary authors. When one act is finished it is usually the same with the author as with the sufferer put to the rack: he has a rest, but lives in expectation of fresh tortures to follow. But M. de Latouche would not allow himself any moments of repose; he substituted Interludes between the acts. We will reproduce verbatim the interlude between the second and the third act. It is needless to explain the situation: the reader will easily guess that, thanks to the efforts of the king's physician, Austria is on the way to triumph over France.
"INTERLUDE
"The personages go out, and after a few minutes interval, the footlights are lowered; night descends. The Chamberlain, preceded by torches, appears at the door of the Queen's apartment, and knocks upon it with his sword-hilt; the head lady-in-waiting comes to the door. They whisper together; the Chamberlain disappears; then, upon a sign from the head lady-in-waiting, the Queen's women arrive successively and ceremoniously group themselves around their chief. A young lady-in-waiting holds back the velvet curtain over the Queen's bedroom. The king's cortège advances; two pages precede his Majesty, holding upon rich cushions the king's sword and the king's breeches. His Majesty is in his night attire of silk, embroidered with gold flowers, edged with ermine; two crowns are embroidered on the lapels. Charles II. wears, carried on a sash, the blue ribbon of France, in honour of the niece of Louis XIV. While passing in front of the line of courtiers, he makes sundry gestures of recognition, pleasure and satisfaction, and the recipients of these marks of favour express their delight. Charles II. stops a moment: according to etiquette he has to hand the candlestick borne by one of the officers to one of the Queen's ladies. His Majesty chooses at a glance the prettiest girl and indicates this favour by a gesture. Two ladies receives the breeches and the sword from the hands of the pages, the others allow the King to pass and quickly close up their ranks. When the curtain has fallen behind his Majesty, the nurse cries, Vive le roi! This cry is repeated by all those present. A symphony, which at first solemnly began with the air of the Folies d'Espagne, ends the concert with a serenade."
The work was performed but once and it has not yet been played in its entirety. From that very night M. de Latouche withdrew his play. But, although the public forgot his drama, M. de Latouche was of too irascible and too vindictive a nature to let the public forget it. He did pretty much what M. Arnault did: he appealed from the performance to the printed edition; only, he did not dedicate the Reine d'Espagne to the prompter. People had heard too much of what the actors had said, from the first word to the last; the play failed through a revolt of modesty and morality, and so the author contested the question of indecency and immorality. We will reproduce the preface of our fellow-dramatist de Latouche. As annalist we relate the fact; as keeper of archives, we find room for the memorandum in our archives.[1]
The protest he made was not enough; he followed it up by pointing out, in the printed play, every fluctuation of feeling shown in the pit and even in the boxes. Thus, one finds successively the following notes at the foot of his pages—
.·. Here they begin to cough.
.·. Whispers. The piece is attacked by persons as thoroughly informed beforehand as the author of the risks of this somewhat novel situation.