Barré emptied a sack in which some ten linch-pins had been already put. We rushed at them and put our guns in order again.
"Good," said Bastide. "Now, out of the park!"
Every one of them went out and Barré went straight off to offer his command to Comte Pernetti, who declined to take it.
Bastide left me to keep guard over the park with Mérimée: our orders were to fire on anybody who came near it, and who, at our second qui vive, did not come up at command.
From that hour on sentry-duty (they had reduced the length of sentry hours to one, on account of the gravity of events) dated my acquaintance with Mérimée; we conversed part of the time, and strange to say, under those circumstances, of art and literature and architecture.
Ten years later, Mérimée, who, no doubt, recollecting what he had wished to tell me that night, namely, that I had the most dramatic imagination he had ever come across, thought fit to suggest to M. de Rémusat, then Minister of the Interior, that I should be asked to write a comedy for the Théâtre-Français.
M. de Rémusat wrote to ask me for a play, enclosing an order for an advance of five thousand francs. A month afterwards, Un Marriage sous Louis XV. was composed, read and rejected by the Théâtre-Français. In due order, I will relate the story of Un Manage sous Louis XV. (the younger brother of Antony) at greater length; it proved as difficult to launch as Antony. But, meanwhile, let us return to that night at the Louvre.