"Do you think so?..."
"Good heavens! Read it."
I called Louis. The servant I then had was called Louis; he was a droll fellow whom I found drunk from time to time, when I returned home at night, and who gave as an excuse that as he had to fight a duel the next morning he must drown his thoughts. I hurried him away to Henry Berthoud, the publisher of Le Musée des Familles, with a message asking him to send me the number which contained M. Gaillardet's article. Louis returned with the required number, and this is what I read
"LA TOUR DE NESLE
"One evening the setting sun lit up the sky with a purple red colour, and bordered the horizon that lay between Sèvres and Saint Cloud with a ribbon of fire; I was on the Pont des Arts, with M. de Jouy's L'Ermite in my hand. Guided by the Academician, I had come there as an observer to the centre of a bird's-eye view; for this particular place is a focus where a thousand rays meet and converge. Opposite to me, the city, the cradle of Paris, with its houses piled up in the shape of a triangle, and as close to one another as a battle corps; at the head of the city, the Pont Neuf, with its ancient arches and its nine adjoining streets. To the left, the Louvre, which is no longer the old Louvre, with its heavy tower and belfry; the Tuileries, that royal pied-à-terre, whose name is ennobled with the dignity of time and of the revolutions which have passed over its head; a monument of which can be said, as Milton said of Satan: 'Lightning has struck it and marked its face!' To the right, the Mint, the sole building in Paris which, together with the Timbre-Royal and the Morgue, possess a physiognomy of their own, and, so to speak, show the nature of their existence. Below, the Institut and the Bibliothèque Mazarine.
"I had reached thus far in my circumspection, when my cicerone (I still refer to M. de Jouy) informed me, in a footnote, that at this place formerly stood the tower of Nesle, from the top of which, according to the chroniclers, several queens or princes were forced to fling themselves into the Seine, to get rid the more surely and swiftly of the misfortune they had drawn down upon themselves. I was much struck by this anecdote. When still young and at college, I had read Brantôme and what it contained about the tower of Nesle; but the recollection of it had been effaced from my memory: it now returned to me vividly and suddenly. Assuming a twofold power from the hour and the place where I stood, it returned with redoubled force and impressiveness; it completely took possession of me.... For the first time, I detected the drama, and my first and best drama was conceived!
"There is something both attractive and terrible in this story of debauchery and of princely slaughters, consummated in the night, at midnight, between the thick walls of a tower, with no witnesses but the burning lamps, the attendant assassins, and God watching all! Something which takes possession of the soul, in the hutchery of these young men (they were all young and beautiful!) who had come there weaponless and without mistrust, ... a truly royal quarry, which hyænas and tigers might envy! But I am letting myself run away in these poetical reflections, and I forget that I am, and only desire to be, a story-teller.
"Let us first speak of the building, then, afterwards, I will speak of its mysteries. At the time of King Philip, the Beautiful, and his sons, the boundaries of Paris were limited, on the left bank of the Seine going down, by an enclosure made by Philippe-Auguste, who gave his name to it. That enclosure, the walls of which correspond pretty nearly to the later towers of the Louvre, had, for their outer defence, a moat which communicated with the Seine, and took the water to the Gate of Bussy. Beyond the enclosure, were the great and little pré-aux-Clercs, so called because they were used on fête days as a promenade by the students of the university. They covered the space now occupied by the rues des Petits-Augustins, Marais-Saint-Germain, Colombier, Jacob, Verneuil, de l'Université and of Saints-Pères, etc. On this space, and adjoining the enclosure, was the hôtel de Nesle, which had a façade of eleven great arcades, with a close which was planted with trees, the end of which, on the quayside, was close to the Church of the Augustines. This mansion occupied the situation of the College Mazarin, the hôtel de la Monnaie and other contiguous sites: its spacious court, its buildings and its gardens were almost bounded by the rues Mazarine and Nevers and the quai Conti, formerly called quai de Nesle.
"Amaury de Nesle, the owner of the mansion, sold it, in 1308, to Philippe le Bel for the sum of 5000 livres; Philippe le Long gave it to Jeanne de Bourgogne, his wife, and she, in her will, ordered it to be sold, and the money applied to the foundation of a college which was called the Collège de Bourgogne. In 1381, Charles VI. sold it to his uncle, the due de Berry. Finding the gardens too small, the latter, in 1385, added seven acres of land to them, situated outside the town moats, and, in order to establish communication, he had a bridge built over the moat. This outer portion was called the petit séjour de Nesle. From the hands of the Duc de Berry, the mansion passed into those of several other princes and, finally, was sold outright by Henri II. and Charles IX. in 1552 and 1570. Upon its ground various constructions rose up, such as the hôtel de Nevers, the hôtel de Guénégaud, which has since taken the name of Conti; later again still, what remained of this mansion was pulled down to make room for the Collège Mazarin, now the Palais de l'Institut. At the western end of the mansion, in the angle made by the course of the Seine and the moat of the enclosure de Philippe-Auguste, were the gate and tower of Nesle, the only ones which were represented on the engraving placed at the head of this account. The gate was a kind of fortress comprised of a building flanked by two round towers, between which was the entrance from the town. This was reached by a stone bridge supported on four arches, and re-establishing the communication intercepted by the moat, which was very wide at this spot.
"It appears that, for a long time, this gate had been closed to the public; for I read letters patent of 13 April 1550, addressed to the provost and aldermen, authorising them to 'cause the gate of Nesle to be opened, for the convenience of the neighbourhood, and for foot passengers and horses only, not for the use of waggons or pack horses subject to the payment of toll.' I further read in these letters that 'the faubourg had been ruined by the wars, and reduced to arable land; and, having begun to be rebuilt under François I., who had allowed it to be done, it was one of the finest suburbs of any of the towns of France. Whereupon, request being made by the town, the opening of the said gate is allowed.'[1]
"It was by this gate of Nesle that Henri IV. entered Paris, after having besieged that side of the city, in 1589. It was still in existence under the reign of Louis XIV. Now as to the tower; it was situated some few feet to the north of the gate, on the point of land which was formed by the moat where it reunited itself to the Seine: the river bathing it at its foot. It was round in shape, was about a hundred and twenty feet in height, and overlooked the roof of the gallery of the Louvre. It was yoked to a second tower containing the spiral staircase, and was not so large in diameter, but still higher. At first sight, one would have said they were like two sisters, one of whom had the heritage of the strength and the maturity of age, and the other the lightness and graces of youth. More pointed and slender, this tower was the look-out one; more solid and staid, the former trusted to its strength and waited. Both were joined to the neighbouring gate by a wall, their ally, these three forming a complete whole, which faced south-west, and was continued by ramparts which, together with several other works, completed the defence.
"On the other bank, opposite these, rose the Louvre, and, in the angle between the Louvre and the Wall of Paris, was a tower similar to them, which they called the tour du Coin. In times of danger, an iron chain, one end of which was fixed to the tour de Nesle, stretched across the Seine, and, held up at various distances by boats, was fastened to the tour du Coin, and barred from that side of the river the entrance from the city of Paris.
"Originally, the door and gate of Nesle bore the name of Philippe Hamelin, their builder or their first owner, I do not know which. Later, they derived their name from the mansion, which had become important. The windows of the tower and one terrace of the mansion looked over the river.
"Brantôme (I now return to him), in the second paragraph, art. Ier of his Femmes Galantes, relates that a Queen of France, whom he does not name, ordinarily lived there, 'who was on the watch there for passers-by, calling out to them and making them come to her; and throwing them from the top of the tower, which still stands, to the water below to drown them.... I do not wish to say, he adds, that this was true; but the common people, the greater portion of Paris, at least, declare this; and no man so simple but who, if you showed him the tower alone, and questioned him concerning it, would say it was so.'
"Jean Second, a Dutch poet, who died in 1536, supported Brantôme's assertion in a piece of Latin verse which he composed about the tower of Nesle.[2]
"Mayeme mentions it in his History of Spain, vol. I, p. 560. Villon, who wrote his poems in the fifteenth century, at a still nearer date to the event, adds his testimony to it. Giving several new details, he informs us that the wretched victims were shut into sacks before being flung into the river. In the second strophe of his Ballade des Dames du temps jadis, he asks—
"... Où la royne
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fût jeté, en ung sac, en Seine?""This Buridan, of whom Villon speaks, escaped from the trap, we know not how. He retired to Vienna, in Austria, where he founded a university, and his name became famous in the schools of Paris in the fifteenth century.
"In 1471, a Master of Arts of the University of Leipzig wrote a small work entitled Commentaire historique sur les jeunes écoliers parisiens que Buridan, etc. It will be seen that the story of the tower of Nesle had become of European fame. The queen, of whom Brantôme, Jean Second, Mayeme and Villon, all speak, was taken to be, successively, Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel; next, Marguerite de Bourgogne, first wife of Louis X., as well as his two sisters, Jeanne and Blanche, all three daughters-in-law of Philippe le Bel.
But Robert Gaguin, a historian of the fifteenth century, comes forward in defence of Jeanne de Navarre. After speaking of the conduct of the three princesses, wives of the three sons of Philippe le Bel and of their punishment, he adds: 'These disorders and their frightful consequences gave birth to a tradition injurious to the memory of Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel. According to that tradition, she caused students whom she attracted to her to be thrown into the river from the window of her room. Only one single student, Jean Buridan, had the good luck to escape the penalty he had incurred; this is why he published this epigram (before his self-exilement): Ne craignez pas de tuer une royne; cela est quelquefois bon (Reginam interficere nolite timere; bonum est).'
"Thus, Gaguin does not contest the fact; on the contrary, he confirms it and develops it, only complaining—and not without reason—that it was attributed to Jeanne de Navarre, who did not live at the same time as Buridan. As regards Margaret of Burgundy and her sisters Jeanne and Blanche, they have not the safeguard or the protection of a date, nor of the verdict of history. All the world knows, on the other hand, that the three sisters were in other ways guilty of the most scandalous conduct; two of them had their two brothers, Philippe and Gaultier d'Aulnay as their lovers; the tower of Nesle then belonged to the Princess Jeanne, and was their meeting-place. But, one day, says Geoffrey of Paris—
"'Tout chant et baudor et leesce
Tornés furent à grand destrèce,
Du cas qui lors en France avint:
Dont escorcher il eu convint,
Deux chevaliers joli et gaie,
Gaultier et Philippe d'Aulnay.'"In fact, these two young men were suddenly arrested as well as the queen and her sisters, the princesses. Philippe confessed that he was the lover of Margaret, wife of Louis X., and Gaultier that of Blanche, Comtesse de la Marche. This confession made, says Geoffrey—
"'L'eure ne fut pas moult retraite
Que donnée fut la sentence;
Si furent jugiés sans doutance
Les deux chevaliers de leur paire.
D'une sentence si amère
Por leur traison et péchié,
Que ils furent escorchié,
. . . . .
Et puis entrainé et pendu!'"Margaret and Blanche were taken to the Andelys, where they were flung, says Geoffrey, into a kind of underground dungeon.
"'Longuement en prison là furent,
Et de confort moult petit urent.
L'une ne l'autre ni ot aise;
Mais toutes voies plus à mal aise
Fut la royne de Navarre,
En haut estoit; et à la terre
La comtesse fut plus aval,
Dont elle souffroit moins de mal,
Car elle estoit plus chaudement.
Ce fut justice voirement,
Car la royne cause estoit,
Du péché que elle avoit fait.'"From this prison they were transferred to the Château-Gaillard, a Normandy fortress. There, by order of Louis X., Margaret was strangled with a towel, according to some, and with her own hair, according to others. Blanche was spared and divorced, and took the veil at the Abbey of Maubisson, where she ended her life. But Jeanne was even more fortunate; she had been arrested, like her sisters—
"'Et, quand la comtesse ce vit,
Hautement s'écria et dit:
Por Dieu, oiez moi, sire Roi;
Qui est qui parle contre moi?
Je dis que je suis preude fame,
Sans nul crisme, sans nul diffame;
Et sé nul ne veut contre dire,
Gentil Roy, je vous réquier. Sire,
Que vous m'oiez en deffendant
Sé nul ou nulle demandant
Me fait chose de mauvestie,
Mon cuer sens si pur, si traitie,
Que bonnement me détiendrai,
Ou tel champion baillerai,
Qui bien saura mon droit deffendre,
S'il ovus pies à mon gage prendre.'She succeeded, indeed, in justifying herself more or less, and her husband Philippe le Long took her back again.
"FRÉDÉRICK GAILLARDET"
There was nothing in all this particularly offensive to me; but I had been so greatly annoyed over the whole business, that I had promised myself, on the very first opportunity that presented itself, to be disagreeable to M. Gaillardet, and I did not intend to let this opportunity slip by. The occasion appeared and I seized it. I wrote, ab irato, the following letter, and I did wrong. I cannot do more than confess it, I hope.
"TO M. S.—HENRY BERTHOUD
"MONSIEUR LE DIRECTEUR,—In turning over one of your back numbers, I chanced upon an article in which M. Gaillardet relates how he wrote his drama of La Tour de Nesle. I should never have believed that such details were of sufficiently lively an interest to the public; but, as M. Gaillardet thinks otherwise, I will submit to his opinion, and I will relate, in my turn, how I wrote mine.
"I must first of all admit that its birth or, rather, its incarnation, its earliest idea, dawned on my mind in a less sudden and inspired and, consequently, less poetical, a manner than in his case. It did not strike me on the Pont des Arts, towards the evening of a beautiful summer day, at that hour when the ray of the western sun purples the horizon of the great city; it did not come to me, indeed, while I was gazing at the Mazarin Palace, vulgarly known as the Institut. That is why my Tour de Nesle is so unacademic. No; but you will, perhaps, recollect the disastrous time when the cholera leapt from St. Petersburg to London, and from London to Paris, and fell upon the Hôtel-Dieu, spreading its wings over the doomed city like a black pall. The rich man in his selfishness, first of all, hoped that the plague-laden breath of this demon would restrict itself to a mortality among the poor; that the aristocratic scourge would only decimate the dwellers in lodgings or garrets, and that it would think twice before it knocked with its trailing shroud at the doors of the mansions of the opulent Chaussée or the noble Faubourg. He thought it had gone mad I He shut the padded shutters of his windows so that no sound should reach him; he ordered his valets to fight fresh candles, to bring in more bottles of wine, to sing more songs. Then, at the close of the orgy, he heard the shout at his door:—It was the Asiatic angel come, like the Commander after Don Juan's feast, to seize him by the hair, saying: 'Repent thee and die!'
"Oh I then there was universal desolation, indeed I and it was curious to see how the rumour of the first cry of death from a rich household went resounding through the faubourg Saint-Honoré to the Luxembourg, and from the Luxembourg to la Nouvelle-Athènes; how, suddenly, all who lived encircled within that elegant triangle were stirred by a growing terror, and thought of nothing but flight, and shut themselves in their carriages emblazoned with the arms of Crécy, of Marengo or of the Bourse. More than one of these carriages, before it reached the end of the street, came into collision with a waggon covered with black on its way to the cemetery, and more than one fugitive met Death, the incorruptible Customs' officer, who forbade him to go beyond the frontier, recognising him as his, and having marked him for the tomb beforehand.
"Then, to the noise of these barouches, berlins and post-chaises, which increased in every direction, and tore along the roads, there succeeded a dull and continuous sound. A long file of hearses of all descriptions, from a simple black curtain converted into one (for these funeral equipages were soon insufficient for the number of guests invited), followed incessantly, at a walking pace, in a triple line, and before them yawned the jaws of a cemetery. Then, by another route, the carriages returned, empty and impatient to be refilled. All things disappear before the incessant fear of death: the Bourse was mute; the walks became solitary; the places of entertainment deserted; the theatre Porte-Saint-Martin, that king of money-makers, took 9000 francs only during the whole month of April.
"One of the bomb-shells which had burst over Paris struck me. I was still laid on my bed, feverish, but convalescent when M. Harel came and sat by my bedside. The disease from which his theatre was suffering was following the reverse course from mine. M. Harel is one of those gladiators who, if not the strongest, are, at least, the most agile I know: a man of calculated cool-headedness, clever by nature, eloquent from necessity. For five years, I believe, fortune and he wrestled with one another and struggled in the lists that go by the name of the pit of a theatre; certainly, more than once, he bit the dust, but, more than once, he also floored his adversary and, each time the thing happened, the goddess did not rise except with empty pockets. Nevertheless, this time, he himself confessed she had her dagger at his throat!
"With a man like M. Harel, circumstances may change from ill to good, and from good to ill ten times in one day; but, in either case, it is always a pleasure to see him because he is always amusing to listen to: Give him Mascarille and Figaro for valets de chambre and, if he does not get the better of them, I wish I may be a Georges Dandin. It was, then, with the usual pleasure which his presence gave me, no matter, as I have previously said, what the position I might be in with respect to him, that I saw M. Harel come in. This time, moreover, I thought we were on friendly terms, and his visit was a real bit of good luck to a convalescent. He recounted to me, in the wittiest manner imaginable, all the tribulations the theatre was undergoing, enough to drive an ordinary man mad, and ended by saying that if my brains were as empty at that moment as his theatre he was a ruined man.
"An author's head is rarely quite dried up; he has always, in one of the drawers of that marvellous piece of furniture which we call the brain, two or three ideas which are awaiting the period of incubation necessary for each of them before they can come forth alive. Unfortunately, or, perhaps, fortunately, none of these ideas was, at the moment, ready to be born from me, and they each needed several more months of gestation unless they were to come forth into the world still-born. M. Harel gave me a week.
"There are two ways of working at literary work as a whole and dramatic work in particular: one is conscientious, the other pecuniary; the first artistic, the second bourgeois. In the first method, one works thinking only of oneself; in the second, thinking only of the public, and the great evil of our profession is that it is very often the pecuniary work which prevails over the conscientious, and the bourgeois upholding itself over the artistic scheme. Which means that, when one works for oneself, one sacrifices all public requirements to personal, whilst, if one works for others, one sacrifices all personal demands to public; and this does not prevent, whatever their fate, an author having works to which he is indifferent and those for which he has a predilection. Now, it is useless to say that works of predilection are not created in a week. I stuck to it, then, not to give up any of the ideas I had in my head at that moment; and, M. Harel seeing this, he incontinently mentioned one of those which he had in his MSS. boxes at his theatre.
"'Pardieu!' he said to me, 'there is in one of the three or four hundred dramas received at the Porte-Saint-Martin a subject which would suit your style of work admirably, and in which Mademoiselle Georges would have a fine part.'
"'What is it?'
"'A Margaret of Burgundy.'
"'I cannot take it: I refused to deal with it the other day when some one suggested it to me.'[3]
"'But why?'
"'Because a friend of mine, who, I think, has much more cleverness than you, which is saying a good deal, is doing a drama on it.'
"'Who is he?'
"'Roger de Beauvoir?'
"'You are mistaken! It is a novel entitled, L'Écolier de Cluny.'
'Oh! then another difficulty is removed! I am all the more pleased to plunge into the stream of the fourteenth century at the time when cholera has come to pay me a call, for I know my Louis le Hutin to my finger-tips.'
"'So it is understood I send you the MS. to-morrow.'
"'But the author! Will it suit his ideas?'
"'The play belongs to me; mine by fair and square contract: I have the right to have it rewritten at my own pleasure, by whomsoever I think fit. And, believe me, I feel sure the author will prefer that you should touch it up rather than any one else.... Besides, let me tell you everything frankly.'
"'I warn you that, after that declaration, I shall be on my guard!'
"'Exactly so ... You know Janin is rather friendly towards me?'
"'Yes.'
"'Very well, I begged him to rewrite this play, as it is unactable as it is, and I only took it after he had consented to overhaul it ...'
"'Then you do not need me?'
"'On the contrary, for it was Janin himself who told me to come to you. He has toiled and moiled at it; he has put marvellous style into it; "I have Janin's MS. in my possession; it is, indeed, perhaps the work on which he best displayed the wealth and flamboyant versatility of his pen. This is so true, that when my drama was done I made use of his work as the gold dust with which to besprinkle my own," but, finally, he was the first to realise that there was no play in what he had done. This morning, he came into my room with an armful of papers, which he flung at me, telling me that you were the only one who could put it into shape, that I should kill him with worry, that he had the cholera and that he was going to apply a score of leeches.'
"'Very well, send me all these old papers to-morrow?'
"'Will you set at it immediately?'
"'I will try; but on one condition.'
"'What is it?'
"'That I shall not appear at the rehearsals, and that my name shall not figure on the bills; because I am doing this for you and not for myself. So give me your word of honour?'
"'My word of honour!'"
"I have already mentioned that, at the time M. Harel came to hunt me up, I was suffering from fever, a state of mind, as every one knows, extremely favourable to the concoction of works of the imagination. Therefore, the very same day, my character of Margaret of Burgundy was decided upon, my rôle of Buridan drawn out and part of the plot contrived. Next day M. Harel arrived with his manuscript.
"'Here the thing is,' he said.
"'What a pity! it comes too late.'
"'How is that?'
"'Your drama is finished.'
"'Bah!'
"'Send me your secretary to-night; he shall have the first scene.'
"'Ah! my dear friend! You are ...'
"' One moment! Let us concern ourselves with business matters now.'
"'But you know that, between us ...'
"'Ah! it is not of my own I wish to speak; it is of those of your young man.... You have made the young man sign a contract, you told me?'
"'Yes.'
"'On what conditions?'
"'Why, according to the usual Porte-Saint-Martin terms: 2 louis per performance, I for himself, I for Janin, and 12 francs' worth of tickets.[4]
"'As Janin renounced his part in the collaboration, does he give up his rights?'
"'There is no doubt on that head; he was the first to say so to me.' 'Then, your young man enjoys the benefit of Janin's withdrawal, and has the treaty entirely to himself?'
"'Nothing of the kind!'
"'Why?'
"'Because, with your rights, which are in addition to the ordinary arrangements, that would cost me a ruinous sum per night. Besides, he only claims one louis; he expects to have a collaborator: he will get his louis and his collaborator; only, the latter, instead of being named Janin, will be called Dumas, and, instead of being named, will not hear of it.'
"'Yes; but I would like this young man to be satisfied with me, all the same.'
"'There is a way; let him deduct his second louis from your rights.'
"'Yes, but then, you, on your side, will take the sum of 20 francs' worth of tickets; that will make even money for him.'
"'I am anxious it should.'
"'Do you agree to that?'
"'Perfectly.'
"'Let us draw it up.'
"I took up pen and paper and the treaty was drawn up and signed.
"'Is there anything besides to take over in what you have brought there?' I continued, pointing to the manuscript lying on my bed.
"'Why, yes, in the first act ... Understand clearly that this MS. is Janin's; I have not brought you the other, which is illegible.' 'I will see that after I have written mine.'
"'Then I shall have something to-night?'
"'Yes, the first scene.'
"'That is well; Verteuil shall be with you at ten o'clock.'[5]
"I spent the day scratching the nib of a pen on paper. Verteuil came that night at the appointed hour; I was dead tired, but the scene was done; it was the tavern scene.
"'At what time must I return?' said Verteuil to me.
"' To-morrow, at four.'
"'And shall I have the second scene?'
"'You shall have it.'
"'Wonderful!...'
"'Only, leave me in peace.'
"'I will take myself off at once.'
"'Verteuil took his leave. I then remembered what M. Harel had said to me of the beauties of style, which, according to him, existed in the beginning of the work. The first thing I caught sight of, on looking at the names of the characters, was that the principal hero was called Anatole, a name which seemed to me singularly modern for a fourteenth century drama; but I went on with my reading undiscouraged. There was a suggestion of plot, of which I took advantage, and, as I have said, admirable things in the way of style. However, I only took the tirade of the grandes dames. Thus, it is at Janin, and not at me, that the marquises of the faubourg Saint-Germain ought to throw stones. As far as the second, third, fourth and fifth acts were concerned, they diverged so greatly from ordinary theatrical rules, that it was impossible to extract anything from them; nevertheless, the magic of the style made me read them right to the end; but, when I had read the manuscript, I laid it down and did not open it again.
"Next day, Verteuil was prompt and I was punctual, and he carried off his second scene. When the first three acts were done, they were read to the actors without waiting for the last two. According to our compact, my name was not uttered, I never appeared at the reading, and M. Harel took the place of the presumed author, who was still absent from Paris.
"In a week's time, M. Harel had his drama completely finished. I then wrote to the young man to tell him that his first performance was going to take place. He never favoured me with an answer; but took carriage, came to Paris and found his rehearsal tickets at his rooms. He rushed to the Porte-Saint-Martin, came in as they began the second act, listened to it quite quietly, also to the third; but, at last, losing patience after the prison scene, he came up on to the stage and asked if they were soon going to begin the rehearsal of his play, or if they had made him come solely and simply to listen to somebody else's drama. The actors began to laugh. The resemblance in the names suddenly occurred to his mind, and he saw clearly that he had said a foolish thing.
"'What,' said Bocage to him, 'do you not recognise your child, or has it been changed at nurse?'
"The young man did not know what to reply.
"'Are you dissatisfied with the prison scene?' continued Bocage.
"'Not at all,' said the young man, who began to regain his self-possession; 'on the contrary, it seems to me very effective.'
"'Very well, but you shall see your second act,' resumed Bocage; 'that will please you indeed!'
"The young man saw his second act, and declared it to be exactly to his taste. Only, he seemed much to regret that the name of Anatole had been exchanged for that of Gaultier d'Aulnay.
"The young man followed the rehearsals of his drama most carefully, making objections at random to which nobody listened, and corrections which they took good care not to follow.
"The day of the representation arrived. Carefully though I had kept the secret on my side, the indiscreet interest of the manager, the jokes of the actors, even the complaints let slip as to the author, had denounced me to the public as the real culprit; a certain way of handling, in the construction of the play, and qualities of style impressed with an individual stamp of its own, at each moment rose up to accuse me more and more; in short, there was not one single person in the theatre but who expected to hear my name pronounced by the lips of Bocage, when he came to announce, according to custom, that the play they had had the honour of performing was by Monsieur * * * He named the young man.
"I had just fulfilled the last engagement that I had set myself, and, certainly, it was the most difficult. To hear a whole theatre stamping, applauding with hundreds of hands, demanding with the frenzy of triumph your name as the author, which is equivalent to your person, your life and your renown, and to give up instead of your own an unknown name to the halo of publicity; and all this when one might have done otherwise, since no sort of promise binds you, since no engagement whatever has been entered into, this is, believe me, the philosophy of delicacy pushed to the extremest limit.[6]
"When the performance was over, I caught sight of our young man as I was going downstairs with the audience. He modestly received the compliments of all his friends and was riding the high horse in the centre of a group of them. Janin was going down at the same time as I. We exchanged one of those looks which nobody could understand; then we went away arm in arm, laughing all along the boulevard, at the young man, at the public and, most of all, at ourselves. Next day, M. Harel, who made out that the absence of my name on the bills was prejudicial to him, invented one of those methods which were peculiar to himself, of telling the public, tacitly, what it was impossible to tell it outright, and he drew up his bill in these terms—
"LA TOUR DE NESLE
"Drame en cinq actes, en prose
"DE MM. * * * ET GAILLARDET"He had, as we see, reversed the rules of algebra, which lay down that one should proceed from the known to the unknown, and not from the unknown to the known. It was impossible to give proof, I think, of a more knowing ignorance and of a more ingenious blunder. Which seeing, the young man wrote the following letter to the editor of the Corsaire.....
We are acquainted with that letter as well as with Harel's answer: I have quoted them previously.
"That answer did not hinder the young man, who was a barrister, from bringing an action against M. Harel, but it was a singular action, as you shall see. He never dreamt of taking the asterisks from the bill altogether; it was a question, therefore, solely, of changing the position of them. A request was, consequently, presented by the young man to the Tribunal de Commerce, to have the things re-established in algebraical position; this request asked for a decree which should authorise the young man to put himself first. Until then all went well, and the young man had not completely forgotten the small service I had just done him, and the way in which I had done it; witness the following letter which he had written me when starting his lawsuit—
'MY DEAR MASTER,—I wish to renew my thanks for your good and loyal conduct in my affairs yesterday; but, since Harel is intractable, I will not yield him an inch of ground, and I am going to fight him. If, indeed, as he says, the honour of his management is imperilled, so is my word compromised; and I am too far pledged with the public and with my friends to remain quiet.
"'Do not let this business worry you, my dear master, and particularly do not let it prevent you from going away when you wish; only, in that case, I would ask you of your goodness to make one trivial declaration,[7] so that Harel may be brought to trial, and made to overcome his obstinacy by the certain prospect of a conviction against him. A thousand pardons for all the upset these miserable, wretched quarrels are causing you. A thousand cordial thanks.
"'4 June 1832'
"Owing to my declaration, the sentence was pronounced and the unlucky asterisks were condemned to be put last. Meanwhile, a singular idea had presented itself to the young man: namely, to sell the MS. without my knowledge. Consequently, he went in search of Duvernoy and told him that he was the author of La Tour de Nesle, and that he had come to do business with him.
"Duvernoy, who knew how things had been going, came in search of me, and warned me of the action of my collaborator. We settled there and then the conditions of the sale. It was fixed at 1400 francs, 700 of which were to be handed to the young man. Doubtless, this sum did not appear to the young man proportionate to the merit of his drama; for he threatened Duvernoy and me with a second lawsuit if we fixed the basis of terms on these conditions. At the end of a fortnight he signed a contract of sale for a sum total of 500 francs. The young man would have done better, you see, to go on letting me look after his business affairs. It is needless to say that only one single name appeared on the pamphlet, as was the case on the bills. You will, perhaps, think that in consideration of this last deed of division my young man held me discharged?
"At the time I was occupied with the publication of my complete works I received a letter from him. What do you think he told me in that letter? He told me that he had just learnt with the greatest surprise that I had the presumption to put his drama amongst mine. As one sees, the matter had degenerated into buffoonery. I replied to the young man that, if he continued to bother me with his nonsense, I should print his manuscript in the preface of my own. This intimation was a genuine thunderbolt to the poor devil. He did not know that M. Harel had made me a present, as a kind of premium, of the autograph MS. after the signing of my agreement for Angèle.
"Next day I received, by a sheriff's officer, an invitation to place my manuscript in its author's hands, because, he said, he had just negotiated its sale. The thing will at first appear odd, but it will be understood, when one reflects that, with the exception of one scene, the drama was entirely unrevised; the publisher, then, could not have been in his right senses, but the author was well within his rights.
"M. Philippe Dupin, to whom I sent both the MSS., and who still has them in his possession, replied to our adversary that we were ready to surrender the said autograph, but that we would only do so in exchange for a copy collated under the inspection of three dramatic authors and certified conformable to them. The young man reflected for a fortnight, then withdrew his demand. This was the third lawsuit he had begun against me, in order to gain for himself 12,000 francs. Since that time I have heard no further mention of the young man, and I do not at the present day know if he be dead or alive. That is how my Tour de Nesle was composed. As for M. Gaillardet's, I am not aware if it is, as he says, his best drama; I still only know it from reading it, and I shall wait until he has it played before deciding if it be better than George and Struensee.—Faithfully, etc.,
"ALEX. DUMAS"