"His friends were accustomed to lofty talk from him. His prophecy was answered with a light laugh and it had passed out of their memories as they drifted into the night. This was one of those intuitions to which he often confessed, and it told him that the years of apprenticeship were behind him and the artist in him was on the eve of acknowledgment.
"On the night of January 11, 1883, the theatre was radiant with an expectant audience—half convinced in advance by the record of the Union Square's past, but by the same token exacting to a merciless degree—to see their old friends in the first performance in America of 'A Parisian Romance.'
"Mansfield made his entrance as the Baron Chevrial within a few moments after the rise of the curtain. It was effected in an unconcerned silence on the part of the audience.
"There were, on the other hand, the deserved receptions of old favorites by old friends, as Miss Jewett, Miss Vernon, Miss Carey, Mr. DeBelleville, Mr. Parselle and Mr. Whiting came upon the scene.
"When Chevrial, finding himself alone with Tirandel and Laubaniere, exposed his amusingly cynical views of life and
society, some attention was paid to a remarkable portrait of a polished, but coarse, gay, though aging, voluptuary. The scene was short and he was soon off, though not without a little impudent touch, in passing the maid in the doorway, that did not slip unnoticed. The dramatic disclosures which followed brought the act to a close with applause that augured well. Henri, Marcelle, and Mme. De Targy were called forward enthusiastically.
"The second act revealed the Baron's chambers. With the exception of two minutes, he was on the stage until the curtain fell. The Baron's effort, so precisely detailed, to reach and raise the dumb-bells from the floor; the inveterate libertine's interview with shrewd Rosa, the danseuse, who took the tips he expected would impoverish her and thus put her in his power, for the purpose of playing them the other way: the biting deliberation of his interview with his good Baroness and Henri, who comes to ruin himself to save his family's honor—all held the audience with a new sensation. As he pushed his palsied arms into his coat and pulled himself fairly off his feeble feet in his effort to button it, turned up to his door humming like a preying bumble-bee, faced slowly about again, his piercing little pink eyes darting with anticipation, and off the trembling old lips droned the telling speech: 'I wonder how his pretty little wife will bear poverty. H'm! We shall see'—the curtain fell to applause which was for the newcomer alone. He had interested the audience and was talked about between the acts.
"Mr. Palmer rushed back to his dressing-room and found him studiously adding new touches to his make-up for the next act. 'Young man,' exclaimed the manager, 'do you know you're making a hit?' 'That's what I'm paid for,' replied Mansfield, without lowering the rabbit's foot.
"The third act was largely Marcelle's. The Baron was on for an episodic interval, but succeeded, in that he did not destroy the impression already created.
"The fourth act revealed a magnificent banquet hall with a huge table laden with crystal, silver, snowy linens, flowers,