Says Marie—
"Le cortège s'avance et descend la colline."
No doubt, in his capacity as historian, Comines will be curious to see so extraordinary a man as St. Francis de Paul. You are wrong. "Come in!" says Comines drily; and he and his daughter leave the stage, just as the head of the cortège appears in sight. But why on earth do they leave the stage? Is there any reason for it? Yes, indeed, there is a reason. Among the people in the procession is Nemours,—for the supposed Comte de Rethel is no other than Nemours,—and neither Comines nor Marie must know that he is there. Now what is Nemours doing under the title of the Comte de Rethel? He has come to assassinate the king; but before risking the stroke, he desires to receive absolution from St. Francis de Paul. Now we know where the saint comes from; we have learnt it in the interval; he comes from Frondi, five or six hundred leagues away. Very well, will you believe that during the whole of that long journey, with the saint in front of him, Nemours could not find a more convenient place in which to ask absolution for the crime he wants to commit, than the threshold of the château of the man he intends to assassinate? We can now sum up the improbabilities of the first act thus—
Comines is out of doors at four o'clock in the morning: first improbability. He comes, before break of day, to read his Mémoires twenty yards from the château of Plessis-les-Tours: second improbability. He does not look around him as he reads them: third improbability. Coitier, in order to chat with him about matters they both know perfectly well, keeps the king waiting for him: fourth improbability. Marie arrives alone, at four in the morning: fifth improbability. Her father never asks where she has slept: sixth improbability. Nemours, after waiting for fifteen years, returns to France in disguise to avenge the death of his father by assassinating a king who is dying, and who, in fact, will die the following day: eighth improbability. Finally, he wishes to receive absolution from Saint Francis de Paul, and instead of making his confession in a room, in a church, in a confessional, which would be the easiest thing to do, he comes to confess at the gates of the château: ninth improbability, which alone is worth all the eight other improbabilities!
Shall I go any further, and shall I pass on from the first to the second act? Bless me, no; it is too poor a job. Let us stop here. I only wanted to prove that, when the audience grumbled, nearly hissed and even hissed outright, at the first performance, it was not in error, and that when it did not come to see Louis XI. during the eight or ten times it was played, it was in the right. But is it true that the public did not go to it? The takings of the first four nights will show this—
First performance 4061 francs
Second " 1408 "
Third " 1785 "
Fourth " 1872 "
Finally, why this failure during the first four representations, and why such great success at the twentieth, thirtieth and fortieth? I am going to tell you. M. Jouslin de la Salle was manager for nearly six months, and, after he took up the management, not a play was a failure. He created successes. When he saw that, at the fourth performance, Louis XI. brought in eighteen hundred francs, he ordered those few persons who came to hire boxes to be told that the whole of the theatre was booked up to the tenth performance. The report of this impossibility to get seats spread over Paris. Everybody wanted to have them. Everybody had them. It was a clever trick! Now let some one else than I take the trouble to undertake, in respect of the last four acts, the work which I have just done in respect of the first, and they will see that, in spite of Ligier's predilection for this drama, it is one of the most indifferent of Casimir Delavigne's works.