"I like him immensely too; but with him one needs ... (thinking of a word) ... a carcassier."
"A carcassier!" I replied in utter astonishment; "a carcassier! What kind of an animal is that?"
"A carcassier," added the eminent director, sententiously, "a carcassier is one who knows how to fix up in solid fashion the carcass of a piece, and I may add that you are not enough of a carcassier in the strictest sense of the word. Bring me another work and the National Theater of the Opéra will be open to you."
I understood. The Opéra was closed to me, and some days after this painful interview I learned that the scenery of Le Roi de Lahore had been relegated irrevocably to the storehouse in the Rue Richer—which meant the final abandonment.
One day that same summer I was walking on the Boulevard des Capuchines, not far from the Rue Daunou; my publisher, George Hartmann, lived in a ground-floor apartment at the end of the court at No. 20 of this street. My thoughts were terribly dark. I went along with careworn face and fainting heart deploring the deceitful promises the directors had sprinkled on me like holy water, when I was suddenly saluted and stopped by one whom I recognized as M. Calabrési, director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie at Brussels.
I stopped nonplussed. Must I put him too in my collection of wooden-faced directors?
"I know," said M. Calabrési, as he accosted me, "that you have a great work, Hérodiade. If you will give it to me, I will put it on at once at the Théâtre de la Monnaie."
"But you don't know it," I said.
"I would never dream of asking a hearing—of you!"
"Well," I replied at once, "I will inflict it on you."