"Let us do so."
Next day I read it to the actors; two days later the play was put in rehearsal. I knew Laferrière only slightly; but he had already at that period, when less used to the stage, the elements of talent to which he owed his reputation later as the first actor in love-scenes to be found between the Porte-Saint-Denis and the Colonne de Juillet. Mademoiselle Ida had a delicate, graceful, artless style, quite unaffected by any theatrical convention. Bocage was the man we know, endowed with youth, that excellent and precious fault, which is never injurious even in playing the parts of old men. So we were in the full tide of rehearsal, when the year 1832 began and the newspapers of I January announced a fearful eruption of Vesuvius.
I was considerably surprised to receive a visit from Laferrière with a newspaper in his hand, on the 7th or 8th. He was as much out of breath as I was the day I went to Delacroix to buy his Marino Faliero.
"Hullo!" I said to him, "is the Opéra-Comique burnt down?"
"No, but Torre-del-Grèco is burning."
"It ought to be used to it by now, for, if I mistake not, it has been rebuilt eleven times!"
"It must be a magnificent sight!"
"Do you happen to want to start for Naples?"
"No; but you might derive profit from it."