After seeing this official document I could have no further doubts upon the subject. I went home, stripped myself of my seditious clothing, put on the dress of ordinary folk, and went off to the Odéon for my rehearsal of Napoléon Bonaparte, which was announced for its first production the next day. As I came away after the rehearsal, I met three or four of my artillery comrades, who congratulated me warmly. My adventure had already spread all over Paris; some-thought it a joke in the worst possible taste, others thought my action heroic. But none of them would believe the truth that it was done through ignorance. To this act of mine I owed being made later a member of the committee to consider the national pensions lists, of the Polish committee and of that for deciding the distribution of honours to those who took conspicuous part in the July Revolution, and of being re-elected as lieutenant in the new artillery,—honours which naturally led to my taking part in the actions of 5 June 1832, and being obliged to spend three months' absence in Switzerland and two in Italy.
But, in the meantime, as I have said, Napoléon was to be acted on the following day, a literary event that was little calculated to restore me to the king's political good books. This time, the poor duc d'Orléans did not come and ask me to intercede with his father to be allowed to go to the Odéon. Napoléon was a success, but only from pure chance: its literary value was pretty nearly nil. The rôle of the spy was the only real original creation; all the rest was done with paste and scissors. There was some hissing amongst the applause, and (a rare thing with an author) I was almost of the opinion of those who hissed. But the expenses, with Frédérick playing the principal part, and Lockroy and Stockleit the secondary ones; with costumes and decorations and the burning of the Kremlin, and the retreat of Bérésina, and especially the passion of five years at Saint Helena, amounting to a hundred thousand francs; how could it, with all this, have been anything but a success? Delaistre acted the part of Hudson Lowe. I remember they were obliged to send the theatre attendants back with him each night to keep him from being stoned on his way home. The honours of the first night belonged by right to Frédérick far more than to me. Frédérick had just begun to make his fine and great reputation, a reputation conscientiously earned and well deserved. He had made his first appearances at the Cirque; then, as we have stated, he came to act at the Odéon, in the part of one of the brothers in Les Macchabées, by M. Guiraud; he next returned to the Ambigu, where he created the parts of Cartouche and of Cardillac, and, subsequently, he went to the Porte-Saint-Martin, where his name had become famous by his Méphistophélès, Marat and Le Joueur. He was a privileged actor, after the style of Kean, full of defects, but as full, also, of fine qualities; he was a genius in parts requiring violence, strength, anger, sarcasm, caprice or buffoonery. At the same time, in summing up the gifts of this eminent actor, it is useless to expect of him attributes that Bocage possessed in such characters as the man Antony, and in La Tour de Nesle. Bocage and Frédérick combined gave us the qualities that Talma, in his prime, gave us by himself. Frédérick finally returned to the Odéon, where he played le Duresnel in La Mère et la Fille most wonderfully; and where he next played Napoléon. But Frédérick's great dramatic talents do not stand out most conspicuously in the part of Napoléon. To speak of him adequately, we must dwell upon his Richard Darlington, Lucrèce Borgia, Kean and Buy Bias.
In this manner did I stride across the invisible abyss that divided one year from another, and passed from the year 1830 to that of 1831, which brought me insensibly to my twenty-ninth year.
[BOOK II]
[CHAPTER I]
The Abbé Châtel—The programme of his church—The Curé of Lèves and M. Clausel de Montais—The Lévois embrace the religion of the primate of the Gauls—Mass in French—The Roman curé—A dead body to inter