Le Triomphe de Trajan was a work in which Napoleon's clemency to a treacherous or patriotic German prince was celebrated, and it has been said that the programme of the 1st of April was changed, because the allied sovereigns disliked the subject of the opera. But it was perfectly natural that they should wish to hear Spontini's master-piece, and that they should not particularly care to listen to a pièce d'occasion, set to music by a French composer of no name.
I have said that Cherubini's Abencerrages, of which all but the overture is now forgotten, was produced in 1813, and that the emperor attended its first representation the night before his departure from Paris, to rejoin his troops, and if possible, check the advance of the victorious allies. No other work of importance was produced at the French Académie until Rossini's Siège de Corinthe was brought out in 1825. This, the first work written by the great Italian master specially for the French Opera, was represented at the existing theatre in the Rue Lepelletier, the opera house in the Rue Richelieu having been pulled down in 1820.
A MURDER AT THE OPERA.
In the year just mentioned, on the 13th of February, being the last Sunday of the Carnival, an unusually brilliant audience had assembled at the Académie Royale. Le Rossignol, an insipid, and fortunately, very brief production, was the opera; but the great attraction of the evening consisted in two ballets, La Carnaval de Venise, and Les Noces de Gamache. The Duke and Duchess de Berri were present, and when Le Carnaval de Venise, Le Rossignol, and the first act of Les Noces de Gamache, had been performed, the duchess rose to leave the theatre. Her husband accompanied her to the carriage, and was taking leave of her, intending to return to the theatre for the last act of the ballet, when a man crept up to him, placed his left arm on the duke's left side, pulled him violently towards him, and as he held him in his grasp, thrust a dagger through his body. The dagger entered the duke's right side, and the pressure of the assassin's arm, and the force with which the blow was given, were so great, that the weapon went through the lungs, and pierced the heart, a blade of six inches inflicting a wound nine inches long. The news of the duke's assassination spread through the streets of Paris as if by electricity; and M. Alexandre Dumas, in his interesting Memoirs, tells us almost the same thing that Balzac says about it in one of his novels; that it was known at the farther end of Paris, before a man on horseback, despatched at the moment the blow was struck, could possibly have reached the spot. On the other hand, M. Castil Blaze shows us very plainly that the terrible occurrence was not known within the Opera; or, at least, only to a few officials, until after the conclusion of the performance, which went on as if nothing had happened. The duke was carried into the director's room, where he was attended by Blancheton, the surgeon of the Opera, and at once bled in both arms. He, himself, drew the dagger from the wound, and observed at the same time that he felt it was mortal. The Count d'Artois, and the Duke and Duchess d'Angoulême arrived soon afterwards. There lay the unhappy prince, on a bed hastily arranged, and already inundated, soaked with blood, surrounded by his father, brother, sister, and wife, whose poignant anguish was from time to time alleviated by some faint ray of hope, destined, however, to be quickly dispelled.
Five of the most celebrated doctors in Paris, with Dupuytren among the number, had been sent for; and as the patient was now nearly suffocating from internal hæmorrhage, the orifice of the wound was widened. This afforded some relief, and for a moment it was thought just possible that a recovery might be effected. Another moment, and it was evident that there was no hope. The duke asked to see his daughter, and embraced her several times; he also expressed a desire to see the king. Now the sacrament was administered to him, but, on the express condition exacted by the Archbishop of Paris, that the Opera House should afterwards be destroyed. Two other unacknowledged daughters of his youth were brought to the dying man's bedside, and received his blessing. He had already recommended them to the duchess's care.
"Soon you will have no father," she said to them, "and I shall have three daughters."
In the meanwhile the Spanish ballet was being continued, amidst the mirth and applause of the audience, who testified by their demeanour that it was Carnival time, and that the jours gras had already commenced. The house was crowded, and the boleros and sequidillas with which the Spaniards of the Parisian ballet astonished and dazzled Don Quixote and his faithful knight, threw boxes, pit, and gallery, into ecstasies of delight.
Elsewhere, in the room next his victim, stood the assassin, interrogated by the ministers, Decazes and Pasquier, with the bloody dagger before them on the table. The murderer simply declared that he had no accomplices,[89] and that he took all the responsibility of the crime on himself.
At five in the morning, Louis XVIII. was by the side of his dying nephew. An attempt had been made, the making of which was little less than an insult to the king, to dissuade him from being present at the duke's last moments.
A MURDER AT THE OPERA.