"MY DEAR DUMAS,—I have received your fourth act. Hum! hum! Your King Louis, the headstrong, is a droll figure, indeed! But, he has abundance of wit, and wit makes anything go well. I await the fifth act.—Yours etc.
HAREL"
The fifth act arrived; only, it was even worse than the fourth! Harel rushed to me with crape on his hat and his head covered with ashes. He was in mourning for his lost success. Nothing I could say reassured him; I must set to work again that very night. Two days later, the scenes were rewritten, and Harel's mind set at rest. The same day I wrote to M. Gaillardet, keeping as far as possible to my own side of the proceedings:—
"MONSIEUR,—M. Harel, with whom I have been in continual business relations, has come to ask me to give him some advice about a work by you which he wishes to put on the stage.
"I seized with pleasure the opportunity of bringing forward a young fellow-dramatist, whom I have not the honour of knowing, but to whom I most sincerely wish success. I have smoothed down all the difficulties which would present themselves to you in the putting into rehearsal of a first piece of work, and your play, as it now is, seems to me capable of succeeding.
"I do not need to tell you, sir, that you alone will be the author, and that my name will not even be mentioned; this is the condition under which I undertook the work to which I have been so fortunate as to be able to add. If you look upon what I have done for you in the light of a kindness, allow me to give it you rather than sell it you.
"ALEX. DUMAS"
Indeed, from my point of view, at any rate, it was really giving my services; although I had superseded Janin as collaborator, I did not take either the author's rights nor the rights to tickets belonging to the collaboration, which, in the contract, remained in Harel's hands, and by virtue of which Harel returned to Janin. Had Harel the right, from Janin's consent, and at his (Janin's) entreaty to substitute me for Janin? I think he had, as my substitution left M. Gaillardet's name alone on the bills, and gave him 48 francs for rights and 12 for tickets, instead of 24 francs for rights and 6 for tickets. M. Gaillardet gained, therefore, from the monetary point of view, as he received double; and he gained in reputation, because his name alone appeared. It remains to prove that the Contract Janin-Gaillardet and Harel had passed under the control of the former contract, according only 48 francs in rights and 12 in tickets. This will be easy for me to do with the two dates. The Contract of Janin-Gaillardet and Harel was signed on 29 March 1832, and the fresh treaty, which still holds good to-day at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre, was not signed between M. Harel and the Commission of Authors, till the following 11 April. I repeat, I would rather have passed over this ridiculous quarrel as to the paternity of the play in silence; but I am compelled to lay details before my readers which will interest them but indifferently, but for which, however, they would have the right to ask if I passed them over in silence. I am writing the history of art during the first half of the nineteenth century; I speak of myself as of a stranger; I lay my plays open to the inspection of my natural arbitrator, the public; it shall judge my work, as they say at the palace. I will neither make out M. Gaillardet to be right or wrong; I will write merely a recitative, and not an argument—
Ad narrandum, non ad firobandum.
[1] In the Paris edition of the Souvenirs, 1854, both M. Gaillardet's and M. Janin's MSS. are referred to as having been brought, both here and later.