“Madame Stolz, Agatha; Mdlle. Dobré, Annette; Duprez, Max.”
“I bet he won’t take it,” I said.
“Why not?”
“You will see soon enough.”
“Bouché will do well for Gaspard.”
“And the Hermit?”
“Oh—well—” said he, awkwardly, “you know the Hermit isn’t much use, I was going—to cut him out.”
“H’m! Really? Yet you are going to act Freyschütz and not Robin des Bois. Evidently, since we sha’n’t agree, it is better for me to retire at once for I can’t stand that sort of correction.”
“Dear me! how wholesale you are in your notions. Very well, we will keep the Hermit, we will keep everything, lock, stock, and barrel.”
Then my troubles began. The actors would make their recitations as slow and stately as a tragedy; Duprez,—as I foretold—although ten years before he had been a light tenor and had managed Max perfectly—found it impossible to adapt his fine tenor voice to the music and demanded all sorts of unheard-of transpositions and alterations. I cut them short by refusing to disintegrate the rôle and it was handed over to Marié.