The 18th of April was the crisis of the first outbreak—the numbers rose to nearly a thousand! At that time, I lived, as I have said, in the rue Saint-Lazare, in the square d'Orléans, and I saw from my windows every day fifty to sixty funerals pass on their way to the Montmartre cemetery. It was with this prospect before my eyes that I wrote one of my gayest comedies: Le Mari de la veuve. This is how the play came about. Mademoiselle Dupont, the excellent soubrette of the Comédie-Française, who laughed with such rosy lips and white teeth, she who was the most impudent Martine I have ever seen, had obtained a benefit performance. I had known her more at Firmin's house privately than at the theatre; she had never acted in any of my plays. One morning—it was, so far as I can recollect, the very day before 29 March, on which day the cholera was to burst forth—she came to see me. Everything was ready for her benefit. She came to ask me to write her a narrative scene. It was Saturday, I think: the performance was to take place on the following Tuesday or Wednesday. There was no time to lose. I am stupid at improvising anything appropriate to such an occasion as this; and yet how could I refuse the charming soubrette a demand of so little importance?
"Defer the performance until Saturday," I said to her, "and, instead of one scene, I will write you a one-act comedy."
"Will you promise to do this?"
"On my honour!"
"I will go and see if it be possible, and I will return in an hour's time."
Twenty minutes later I received a note from Mademoiselle Dupont telling me she had obtained a respite of twelve days, and asking me to make a part in it for Mademoiselle Mars. I had not been on very friendly terms with Mademoiselle Mars since Antony, and she had not taken the trouble to make it up with me.
Now I had one friend, a man of infinite cleverness, head or second in command at the Home Offices,—a friend who has since made his name in the Government. He was called, and happily still calls himself, Eugène Durieu. I had met him two or three times during the past year, and every time he had given me the subject for a play, either in one act, or two or in three. But I do not know why we had never yet settled anything. I wrote to him and he came to me.
"Let us look over your subjects," I said; "I want a play in one act for Mademoiselle Dupont's benefit"—