The days rolled by, and I knew that my future adversary went shooting every morning, and I was kept informed of the progress which he made. Finally, appeared the famous answer. Let me be permitted to reproduce it in full, with the insults it contains. It is probable that M. Gaillardet to-day regrets his insults towards me, as I regret my violence towards him.[8]
"TO M. S.—HENRY BERTHOUD
"MONSIEUR LE DIRECTEUR,—I published an article in the twenty-first number of Le Musée des Families which you did me the honour to ask from me on the ancient tower of Nesle. In that article, I related cursorily, and under the form of a chat without any sort of pretension, how the idea had come to me to write a drama, the first conception of which no one has contested with me; a drama printed and published over two years ago, and performed to-day for the two hundredth time under my name, by the consent of M. Dumas himself. I did not say a word of M. Dumas; I did not make any allusion to the judicial and literary discussion which arose formerly between him and me. Anyone can be convinced of this by reading my article. I should have a scruple, indeed, against reviving a quarrel long since extinguished, and to which an amicable transaction put an end; a transaction proposed by M. Dumas himself, as I shall tell in due course, by which the public controversy that I had then desired and provoked was settled in its earliest stages. However that may be, to-day M. Dumas returns to the affair; he rekindles the cold and scattered ashes, piling them up with his hands and stirring them to life with his breath, and relights the fire, at the risk of burning his own fingers at it. Since he has thrown down the glove, I pick it up. He has incited me, I reply to him. So much the worse for him if he be wounded in this game, if his reputation chances to be compromised thereby: it does not rest with me to avoid the fight.... I am the offended, the insulted one I and, if ever retaliation be permissible, it is to him who has not sought the attack.... To such an one, vengeance is sacred and reprisals holy, he employs the right of natural and legitimate defence!
"I come, then, to the complete and true story of La Tour de Nesle. I will base my recital on proofs written and signed by the actual personages in this story, and, when proofs shall fail me, I will put before the readers' eyes the suppositions and probabilities of the case, and say to him: 'Consider and judge!' But, in a lawsuit like this, where honour is everything, where the written proof of many of the general facts cannot be set forth (for that, the future would need to have been foreseen and divined as to what would happen), where each of the litigants in certain circumstances must be believed, because he has always told the truth in others, where he who has once lied, on the contrary, is no more worthy of credence; in an affair, in fact, where good faith ought to prevail over lying, when both have nothing to show beyond their word,—I must, and I will, before all else, convince my adversary of inaccuracy (I will be polite in expression), and, that inaccuracy proved, I will bind it on his forehead like the inscription of a brand at the head of a standard, so that the stigma may survive and hover incessantly over the guilty one, before the eyes of the judges in this suit.
"M. Dumas declares (I begin with the first sentence of his article relative to La Tour de Nesle), that, having received a visit from M. Harel, the latter said to him, '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, further: 'You have made the young man sign a contract, you told me?' 'Yes.' 'On what conditions?' 'Why, according to the usual terms of the Porte-Saint-Martin: 2 louis per performance, 1 for himself, 1 for Janin and 12 francs' worth of tickets.' Then, in a note, M. Dumas adds: 'This treaty is still in the possession of M. Harel.' Very well, the more words the more inaccuracies. Here is the only treaty which ever existed between me and M. Harel; it is the one they made me sign, by what manœuvre I will tell later, when they made me accept the collaboration of M. Janin."
Then followed the text of that treaty, which the reader knows.
"'The drama was played,' says M. Dumas; 'they gave the name of the young man. (M. Dumas has throughout used that expression to designate me.) To hear a whole theatre clapping, demanding your name and, instead of one's own, an unknown name given up 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 the philosophy of delicacy pushed to the extremest limit.'
"Well, here is the letter I received from M. Dumas before the performance, and the conditions on which alone I consented to allow the play to be acted."
That letter, the first that I wrote to M. Gaillardet, will not have been forgotten.
"Now, reader, decide. In the case of M. Dumas, which holds its head highest, the philosophy of delicacy, or, indeed, that of assurance? 'Duvemoy came in search of me,' continues M. Dumas, 'and 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.... In a fortnight's time, 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.'
"Here is a declaration signed by M. Duvernoy.
"'By the same impartial spirit which made me give a declaration to M. Alexandre Dumas in which I acknowledged that M. Gaillardet had offered me the MS. of La Tour de Nesle (we shall see this later), I assert that there was never any question of 1400 francs for the price of the said MS., but of a sum which, I believe, was to be 1000 francs.
DUVERNOY"'PARIS, 8 Septembre 1834'
"I have much more to say and all the philosophies to quote! but they will find room in my narrative; for, now, yes,—now, I feel myself quite strong enough to undertake them!
"It was on 27 March that I read my drama La Tour de Nesle to M. Harel in the presence of M. Janin and of Mademoiselle Georges. The drama was received. 'Dumas could not have done better!' exclaimed the manager, enthusiastically. 'There is, however, something to touch up in the style, which is not at all dramatic; but do not worry yourself about that; begin another drama, and Janin will do us both the favour of revising some pages.' I did not quite comprehend how M. Janin, who had never written a play, could have a dramatic style, to use the manager's expression. 'But, if he has not written one,' I said to myself, 'he has heard a great many, which, perhaps, comes to the same thing.'
"I therefore professed that I should be extremely flattered and most grateful if M. Janin would indeed smooth down a few sentences. M. Janin consented with ready willingness, and I left M. Janin and Mademoiselle Georges joyfully. I was in the seventh heaven.... My rapture did not last long.
"Two days later, 29 March, I went to see what my Janinised drama had become. What was my surprise to see a whole act rewritten! 'It is a big piece of work,' I said aside to the manager. 'M. Janin did much more than I had desired; but I do not think my style so bad that he need ...' 'No, no, certainly,' replied M. Harel; 'but Janin has thrown himself thoroughly into it, he will at least want his share.' 'What! his share?' 'Yes, his half.' 'But it is a collaboration then?—there is some misunderstanding; I will go and tell M. Janin.' 'Ah! what are you going to do? You will offend Janin, Janin the most influential of the critics! You will make an enemy for life.' 'Bah!' 'I tell you it is so. You do not know what the theatre is! But ... besides they have set to work on it! It is not intact. You are bound on both sides! etc., etc.,' to such an extent that M. Harel, seeing me quite stunned, took a sheet of paper, scrawled upon it the agreement that I have transcribed above, and made me sign it.... And that is how I got my first collaborator.
"Then, I attributed that occurrence to a misunderstanding; now, I attribute it to a very good understanding: ideas change with time!
"Then the day came for M. Janin to read us his work. I said nothing, for, as far as I can, I exercise charity, even towards my enemies!... Let it be known only that, by common accord, the work was judged null and void. Janin withdrew and gave up the task (I will give the written proof), and M. Harel returned purely and simply to my drama. Now, since the day upon which I read my play, I had conceived new ideas and improvements, due as much to discussion and to the criticisms of the manager as to my own reflections. But, in order to enlighten the public as to the true mysteries of the birth of La Tour de Nesle, and, as it were, to initiate it into the phases and developments of the work by which this drama was conceived, abnormal in its success and by reason of the quarrels which it raised, I am about to establish succinctly what the drama was, as a whole, and in comparison with the drama performed, which I read to M. Harel, and which was returned to me at the epoch of which I am speaking. It will be easy to all to understand me at once (who has not seen La Tour de Nesle?), and to verify me afterwards, M. Dumas having the original MS. in his possession, and able to show it to whomsoever desires to see it; also, people may be confident that I shall say less rather than more. I quote from memory and my adversary has the book!"
Here, M. Gaillardet gave the résumé of his first MS.; then he continued thus—
"The reader has already gathered at what points the two dramas coincide. Are not these points, in the small portion I have quoted, and quoted faithfully (for if I were the man to make up an audacious lie, my adversary would hold in his hands the means of exposing me!)—are not those points already the fundamental basis of the acted drama? Are they not the bones and marrow, the substance and framework?... Indeed I I venture to say that had I done only that in the play, I should have done more than half the drama, consequently ten, twenty times more than M. Dumas allows me, since he allows me nothing. Very well! he has dared to write and to print it in all his letters! But, after what we know of him, of what can we and should we be surprised?
"M. Harel had expressed much regret to me; first, because the drama was not en tableaux; that style suited the ways of his theatre better, and the success of Richard supported the opinion; secondly, that I had not made Buridan the father of Gaultier and of Philippe, whose mother (Marguerite) was alone known. 'That would complicate the plot,' he said to me. Finally, he thought it improbable that Marguerite, a queen and all-powerful, would not have had Buridan arrested and got rid of, at the first words of his revelation. At the juxtaposition of these two latter objections a sudden ray of light sprang up in me. Let Buridan be the father indeed, by means of a pre-existing intrigue, and let him be arrested by Marguerite, who wanted to rid herself of him; then, at the moment of his greatest peril, let him make himself known, and there would be the opportunity for a magnificent scene—capital! The prison scene was hit upon.
"Two days after that on which Janin had given up the drama, like an athlete, exhausted by a task too heavy for him, I took to M. Harel, the manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin, a scenario which was pretty nearly that of La Tour de Nesle. I am, however, going to point out the differences.
"Orsini was not a tavern-keeper; that was Landry, although both were men belonging to the tower of Nesle. As for Orsini, he was one of those magicians extremely feared in his time under the name of envoûteurs. A confidant of Marguerite, he receives at his house the courtiers, a part very much like that of Ruggieri in Henri III.; it is on that account, I think, that M. Dumas has made him a tavern-keeper instead of Landry.
"Secondly, the prison scene was arranged like this so that Buridan might finish his part holding Marguerite's hands, and say to her, 'Délie ces cordes!' Marguerite, falling on her knees obediently, and freeing him with one single cut. M. Dumas has tripled that action by causing Buridan only to be unbound after three attempts.
"He is miles beyond me, as tried talent far exceeds feeble inexperienced effort, as attainment exceeds inexperience.
"As far as the truth of what I advance is concerned, it will be detected by all impartial readers, first, in the accuracy and faithfulness of its details, if I may so express it; I do not merely relate what is in the actual Tour de Nesle, but things that are not to be found in that, among others, one scene in the fourth act. Buridan comes as a gipsy, and not as a captain, to visit the wizard Orsini. The latter wants to overawe the gipsy, who revealed to him the murders of the tower of Nesle as he had revealed them to Marguerite; and soon the magician falls at the gipsy's feet, seized with the very superstitions he himself instils into the vulgar-minded, to enquire if, perhaps, there be true sorcerers! This scene was bound to disappear directly Orsini was made an inn-keeper.
"Finally, as to probability, I might say concerning the proof of my word, that I have the actual words of M. Dumas in the letter in which he says to me: 'Harel has come to ask my advice about a drama by you which he wishes to put on the stage. Your play ... that which I have been happy to have been able to add to it ... etc.' Nobody speaks like this of a work in which he has done everything.
"Next, a line from M. Harel, which I received before my departure (after Janin's withdrawal,) in which he says to me: 'Write to me; take care of your health and, above all, work! 'There were then, modifications, changes decided upon, a work to be done!... They deny it; I assert it and assert it with proof!... It is for the reader to decide the matter.[9]
"So, now, you will perceive that it will matter little to me whether M. Dumas either had or had not my first MS. in his possession. I have proved that he has had my second plan; from another source, he himself confesses to have possessed and partly copied Janin's MS. which was mine spoilt.... What more do I need?
"I will, therefore, resume my story from where I left off. Felonies were about to succeed one another like file-firing. It was on 8 April when I took my scenario to M. Harel. My father died on the 9th; he had come to Paris on purpose to fetch me away from the contagion which reigned over the city, and his joy in being present at my first play induced him to remain with me! This recollection breaks my heart!... On the 10th, as a messenger of death, I went to console my poor mother. This was the night of the same day on which M. Harel wrote me the note wherein he said, 'Take care of your health!' Wretched irony, flung at me between a misfortune which had come upon me and an act of robbery which was about to overtake me! 'Go,' he had said to me; 'I have a play before yours: you have three months before you. Take it easy and write to me!'
"I had scarcely been gone a month before I had to write to M. Janin to ask him about an announcement relative to La Tour de Nesle. A book had just appeared upon the same subject (L'Écolier de Cluny), and I did not wish it to be thought that my play was taken from the book. Janin replied—
"'I will willingly do what you ask me: but what is the good? I announce the approaching performance of your play. I say your and not our, because I count for absolutely nothing in it; you know the matter rests between you and M. Harel; that was agreed upon a long time ago, etc.
JULES JANIN'"'10 May 1832'
"After that, not a word further. I wrote to Paris, and I learnt that M. Dumas has been made and has constituted himself my collaborator. I leave the reader to imagine what my feelings were!...
"Beside myself, trembling with rage and indignation, I wrote to M. Harel to forbid him to act the play; to M. Dumas to beg him to prevent it. 'You have doubtless been misinformed,' I said to him; 'the play belongs to me and to me alone; I do not wish to have collaborators at all, certainly not clandestine ones, imposed upon me; I therefore appeal to you, for your own honour's sake, and I point out to you the necessity for stopping the rehearsals, etc.'
"No answer either from M. Harel or M. Dumas!... I set off, and, before going to my home, I went in travelling garb, as I was, straight to M. Harel. 'I am ruined!' he said to me; 'it is true I have deceived you.... Now, what are you going to do?... Stop the play!—You will not succeed in doing that; I shall change the title of it and play it. You can attack me for forgery, theft, plagiarism, what you like: you would obtain 1200 francs damages. Ask a lawyer! If, however, you let it be played you will gain 12,000 francs, etc.' He spoke the truth, for such is the protection ordinarily granted by our judges to the author who is robbed! ... I returned home, pale with rage, and it was then I found the grandiloquent letter from M. Dumas, quoted by me at the beginning of this article. Such are the principal facts.
"Now, what do you say to those lines of M. Dumas? 'I wrote to the young man, and the young man never favoured me with an answer!' This time it is the philosophy of truthfulness, with a vengeance! Nobody would have believed it, if I had not held the evidence and the means of proving what I am stating! M. Dumas not having yielded to the request or to the summons that I sent him to stop the rehearsals of the play (which was the first, if not the second, of his mistakes, from which he will never clear himself, because it proves his complicity), and M. Harel threatening to play in spite of me—which, both morally and physically, he was capable of doing,—there was nothing else left for me to do but to let my drama be performed, and according to the conditions stipulated in M. Dumas's letter, in which he stated that his name would not be given, that I should be the sole author, that he wished to tender me a service and not to sell it me.
"Very well, then, the day following the first performance, asterisks appeared on the playbills before my name, and now, M. Dumas wants to replace my name by his: it will be seen what encroachments these were! This is not all. When it came to payment, they would not give me more than one share. Now, listen carefully: during the current April, the Commission of Authors had made an agreement with M. Harel, before the performance of my play, which stipulated for a fee of ten per cent, for the authors, in the performances to come on at the Porte-Saint-Martin. I had, then, the right to the benefit of this agreement. M. Dumas enjoyed it, and more beside; he also received two and three hundred francs per night. What did they leave me? Forty-eight francs, the price of an old agreement! and M. Dumas took half of it from me—that is the service he wished to tender me, and not to sell!!!
"There was nothing for it but to go to law to protest against such deeds, as there is nothing but the police station against theft and pickpocketting. I therefore had recourse to the law courts.
"If more proof still be needed, I have it at hand, drawn up and set forth in the legal deeds, properly attested, which began the examination of this trial. But it would seem that the trial a little alarmed M. Dumas's public conscience, for he suggested to me to stop it by a compromise.
"In that compromise—First, we both acknowledged each other as joint authors of La Tour de Nesle; second, it was specified that this play should always be published and acted under my name, followed by asterisks; third, M. Dumas guaranteed me a settled sum of 48 francs per performance, and half of his tickets. 'To what sum do they amount?' I asked him in all good faith. 'To 36 francs, upon my honour!' he replied, glancing at M. Harel; so I accepted 18 francs' worth of tickets. Next day, M. Harel would not fulfil the above-mentioned compromise, as far as it concerned himself, although he had been the instigator of, and witness to, it. It needed a trial to compel him to do it, and M. Dumas blamed him on that occasion.... I had that to thank him for ... it was the first and last time. He also quoted my letter.
"A little while later, I learnt that M. Dumas, who had declared to me upon his honour that there would only be 36 francs' worth of tickets, had over 50! But, while taking the oath, he had looked at M. Harel. The MS. was still for sale. Barba, who had offered 1000 francs for it, and never 1400, would give no more than 500 francs. Half that sum should have been paid down to each of us there and then, and the remainder in six months from that date. In a few days' time, when I went to M. Barba to get my 125 francs, I learnt that M. Dumas had come and taken my share of the cash payable down with his own, saying he was authorised to do so by me!
"There is something so incredible in such an act, so petty, so degrading to the man of letters, that I should not have dared to cite it, had I not possessed the proof, written by M. Dumas himself. Indeed, when Barba informed me of that, not venturing to believe it, I wrote to M. Dumas, who replied that he had, indeed, received 250 francs; but Barba had said he had special arrangements with me (did they not say that it was Barba who had wished to pay there and then?); that, moreover, he had enabled me to exact the same advantage for myself as for him ... that I could make use of his letter to get myself also paid at once, that he authorised me, etc. This was making use of a first fraud in order to commit a second, two indelicacies instead of one! I should have preferred to be settled by a six months' bill.[10] Now, Monsieur Dumas, what do you suppose I should reply to you—you who treated me in your letter as though I were a poor devil of a fellow?... I am too well-bred for you to guess. Now, in order to escape the sooner out of these unworthy details, which present so ill a picture, I will state that I should never oppose the insertion of La Tour de Nesle among M. Dumas's complete works (although that right resulted strictly as mine from the terms of our transaction together), if M. Dumas had consented to make a simple mention of my collaboration in that play. That is the method followed nowadays by M. Scribe. But, to a polite letter M. Dumas replied by one of those incivilities of which he claims the monopoly.[11]
"Finally, if I asked M. Dumas for my first MS. through a sheriff's officer, it was because it was, on his part, incredible disloyalty to put side by side with this sole and only MS. a play which had had at the least three!
"This is the truth about La Tour de Nesle and the whole truth. I should add to the documents which I have brought forward and to the proofs I have given, that, summoned before our peerage, the Commission of Authors, I cited and enumerated all these details and facts before M. Dumas in person! And there, as here, I more than once felt my cheeks flush with involuntary shame. Up to now, M. Dumas seemed great and sacred in my eyes, with the greatness of talent, the sacredness of art. So, if, after this controversy, which he provoked, another should follow it, my hand may indeed tremble ... for behind M. Dumas the man, there is the artist, and, beneath the shame, is his fame.
"P.S.—In support of his statements, M. Dumas has produced various certificates, to each of which I shall only concede what is necessary in order to the appreciation of their worth and weight.
"I will say nothing of M. Harel, who was the primary culprit in the whole affair, and whose accomplice M. Dumas is. M. Dumas ought to be ashamed to call upon such a witness.
"M. Verteuil, M. Harel's secretary, asserts to having gone to M. Dumas's house to fetch the five acts of La Tour de Nesle (excellent!) as he wrote them, to having re-copied his manuscript entirely (better and better!), which had no sort of resemblance with that (which?) of M. Gaillardet, a MS. which was in my possession about three months.... Ah! Monsieur Verteuil, I pull you up here!... La Tour de Nesle was performed on 31 May. It was on 29 March (look at the date at the top) when my MS. was received. I left on 10 April; M. Dumas was my collaborator on the 11th. He declares he did his work in a week, and you declare that my MS. had then been about three months in your possession?... Oh I Monsieur Verteuil, you are indeed secretary to M. Harel.
"M. Duvernoy certifies that I wished to sell the drama (I believe him there, indeed!). He asserted to me that M. Dumas had quoted a false price; this is rather more positive. There now only remains M. Janin's attestation. Ah! that, I confess, I scarcely expected. M. Janin writes that nothing can be more accurate than the details given by M. Dumas, which he thinks he remembers and that, on the whole, M. Dumas's reply is truthful! and M. Dumas declares that Janin, accepted by me as a collaborator, had given his rights to him and been sent by M. Harel! This is too much! M. Janin, then, forgets that he had no further rights, that he had waived his claim, that he had proclaimed this to me in a letter written and signed in his own hand?
"This is not all, and, since I must tell it you, reader, be informed that, after the first performance of La Tour de Nesle, it was M. Janin who bound me to protest; it was at his house that I wrote my protest; it was he himself who wanted to dictate it to me and did do so! He was furious with MM. Harel and Dumas. This is not all yet; in consequence of the lawsuit which arose between M. Harel and myself before the Tribunal de Commerce, M. Janin himself wrote to M. Darmaing, to support a protest that I made to the Gazette des Tribunaux: 'I beg M. Darmaing to insert the enclosed short note, I entreat it in my own name, and that of M. Gaillardet. I do not understand the stubbornness with which they seek to rob this young man of that which belongs to him, etc.' (See La Gazette des Tribunaux, 1 July 1832.) What do you say to it, reader? I had promised to relate the petty secrets of this apostasy, but I have not space; and, besides, I reflected that it was not worth the trouble, and so I sign myself—
"F. GAILLARDET"
After this reply, it will be realised that M. Gaillardet had no right to delay our duel, as, not having spared me less than I had him, it was I who considered myself the injured party. So, after a fresh call on the part of my seconds, the meeting was fixed for 17 October 1834.