Memoirs | Page 6

us many a useful lesson, filling our heads with classic literature far more efficiently than all the reading and courses of lectures in the world. But those unlucky classics were very much neglected. They were not a bit the fashion. There would hardly be two hundred people in the theatre, and all the boxes were empty. A wretched orchestra, conducted by a stout man of the name of Chodron, squeaked a tune that set everybody's teeth on edge. Up would go the curtain, without any warning, in the very middle of some phrase in the music which would break off with a sigh from the clarionet, and drearily the play would begin. We were all eyes and ears in spite of that, and nothing in the play of the tragic actresses--Madame Duchesnois, Madame Paradol, and Madame Bourgoin--ever escaped us. I can see and hear yet all Corneille's plays, and Racine's too, and Zaire, and Mahomet, and L'Orphelin de la Chine, and many more. But what we longed for most impatiently were Moliere's plays. They were our prime favourites, and what actors too! Monrose, Cartigny, Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, and Faure, whose appearances as Fleurant in Le Malade and Truffaldin in L'Etourdi we always greeted with delight, on account of the properties he carried in his hand. This same Faure, an old soldier of 1782, never failed to say to my father, as he escorted him to the door, taper in hand, "Ha, Sir! this is not the camp at la Lune!" referring to a bivouac just before the battle of Valmy. It was always a great amusement to us to go along the passages behind the scenes, especially when the classic Roman processions were being formed up there for the tragedies, for among the lictors and the other Romans we recognized many of the clerks and workmen employed about the Palais-Royal, and we used to bid them good day, and call them by their names, and be very proud indeed of speaking to artists, and we went home to our own fold, imitating the call in the theatre: "On va-a commmencer! On co-mmence!"(Going to begin, just beginning).Sometimes too we were taken to see modern plays, but that did not happen often. Yet even now I seem to hear the actor Armand, just before 1830, talking thick behind his Directoire cravat, in TOM JONES:--
Point d'amis, point de grace, A la session prochaine il faudra qu'on y passe!
and the whole house rose at him! I remember also being taken to the first night of Henri III., and being very much amused by the cups and balls and the pea-shooters. I was much affected too by the death of Arthur, a charming page in a violet dress, played by Mile. Despreaux, who afterwards became Madame Allan. I had no eyes for anybody else. As we were going away, my father leading me by the hand, we found the Duchesse de Guise, Mademoiselle Mars, panting, and wrapped in a rose- coloured satin cloak lined with swansdown, waiting for the compliments which my father showered on her. She had not impressed me nearly so much as the page in violet.
Talking of Henri III., a play we took great interest in, because its author, quite unknown at the time, belonged to our household, I will recall here a recollection connected with the name of Alexandre Dumas. Everybody knows he began life as a clerk in my father's library at the Palais-Royal. The chief librarian was Vatout, whose works, and perhaps too some well-known songs, have gained him a seat in the Academy. But Vatout was never in the library by any chance. The real librarian, and a very worthy fellow he was, was a man of the name of Tallencourt. He was an old soldier, and this caused him to be elected captain of a grenadier company in the Citizen Guard--a position to which, in the first blush of his enthusiasm, he attached an exaggerated importance. Well, some time after Dumas had resigned his position in the library, in the midst of the riots which occurred so frequently about that period, we saw Tallencourt come home one day in full warlike attire, with his bearskin cap and his cloak, and a very gloomy countenance." What do you think has just happened to me? I was in command of a patrol in my ward--as we had heard several shots, we were advancing with the greatest caution, in double file, keeping close to the walls, with our eyes and ears open. All at once I heard a shout--'Here's for you, de Tallencourt!' and then a shot. Well, the shout--that voice--it was Alexandre Dumas' voice!" "Oh, nonsense!" we all cried. But he stuck to it--and we resisted the violent inclination to laugh that assailed us, convinced as we were that