"How can the question be settled?" queried Quinquart, dismayed. "Who shall be the judge?"
"Paris shall be the judge," affirmed Suzanne. "We are the servants of the public—I will take the public's word!"
Of course she was as pretty as a picture, or she couldn't have done these things.
Then poor Quinquart withdrew, plunged in reverie. So did Robichon. Quinquart reflected that she had been talking through her expensive hat. Robichon was of the same opinion. The public lauded them both, was no less generous to one than to the other—to wait for the judgment of Paris appeared equivalent to postponing the matter sine die. No way out presented itself to Quinquart. None occurred to Robichon.
"Mon vieux," said the latter, as they sat on the terrace of their favourite café a day or two before the annual vacation, "let us discuss this amicably. Have a cigarette! You are an actor, therefore you consider yourself more talented than I. I, too, am an actor, therefore I regard you as less gifted than myself. So much for our artistic standpoints! But we are also men of the world, and it must be obvious to both of us that we might go on being funny until we reached our death-beds without demonstrating the supremacy of either. Enfin, our only hope lies in versatility—the conqueror must distinguish himself in a solemn part!" He viewed the other with complacence, for the quaint Quinquart had been designed for a droll by Nature.
"Right!" said Quinquart. He contemplated his colleague with satisfaction, for it was impossible to fancy the fat Robichon in tragedy.
"I perceive only one drawback to the plan," continued Robichon, "the Management will never consent to accord us a chance. Is it not always so in the theatre? One succeeds in a certain line of business and one must be resigned to play that line as long as one lives. If my earliest success had been scored as a villain of melodrama, it would be believed that I was competent to enact nothing but villains of melodrama; it happened that I made a hit as a comedian, wherefore nobody will credit that I am capable of anything but being comic."
"Same here!" concurred Quinquart. "Well, then, what do you propose?"
Robichon mused. "Since we shall not be allowed to do ourselves justice on the stage, we must find an opportunity off it!"
"A private performance? Good! Yet, if it is a private performance, how is Paris to be the judge?"