“They agree to take the hundred copies, dear boy!” she cried, addressing Finot; “they won’t cost the management anything, for the chorus and the orchestra and the corps de ballet are to take them whether they like it or not; but your paper is so clever that nobody will grumble. And you are going to have your boxes. Here is the subscription for the first quarter,” she continued, holding out a couple of banknotes; “so don’t cut me up!”
“It is all over with me!” groaned Finot; “I must suppress my abominable diatribe, and I haven’t another notion in my head.”
“What a happy inspiration, divine Laïs!” exclaimed Blondet, who had followed the lady upstairs and brought Nathan, Vernou and Claude Vignon with him. “Stop to supper, there is a dear, or I will crush thee, butterfly as thou art. There will be no professional jealousies, as you are a dancer; and as to beauty, you have all of you too much sense to show jealousy in public.”
“Oh dear!” cried Finot, “Nathan, Blondet, du Bruel, help, friends! I want five columns.”
“I can make two of the play,” said Lucien.
“I have enough for one,” added Lousteau.
“Very well; Nathan, Vernou, and du Bruel will make the jokes at the end; and Blondet, good fellow, surely will vouchsafe a couple of short columns for the first sheet. I will run round to the printer. It is lucky that you brought your carriage, Tullia.”
“Yes, but the Duke is waiting below in it, and he has a German Minister with him.”
“Ask the Duke and the Minister to come up,” said Nathan.
“A German? They are the ones to drink, and they listen too; he shall hear some astonishing things to send home to his Government,” cried Blondet.
“Is there any sufficiently serious personage to go down to speak to him?” asked Finot. “Here, du Bruel, you are an official; bring up the Duc de Rhétoré and the Minister, and give your arm to Tullia. Dear me! Tullia, how handsome you are tonight!”
“We shall be thirteen at table!” exclaimed Matifat, paling visibly.
“No, fourteen,” said a voice in the doorway, and Florentine appeared. “I have come to look after ‘milord Cardot,’ ” she added, speaking with a burlesque English accent.
“And besides,” said Lousteau, “Claude Vignon came with Blondet.”
“I brought him here to drink,” returned Blondet, taking up an inkstand. “Look here, all of you, you must use all your wit before those fifty-six bottles of wine drive it out. And, of all things, stir up du Bruel; he is a vaudevillist, he is capable of making bad jokes if you get him to concert pitch.”
And Lucien wrote his first newspaper article at the round table in Florine’s boudoir, by the light of the pink candles lighted by Matifat; before such a remarkable audience he was eager to show what he could do.
The Panorama-Dramatique.
First performance of the Alcalde in a Fix, an imbroglio in three acts.—First appearance of Mademoiselle Florine.—Mademoiselle Coralie.—Vignol.
People are coming and going, walking and talking, everybody is looking for something, nobody finds anything. General hubbub. The Alcalde has lost his daughter and found his cap, but the cap does not fit; it must belong to some thief. Where is the thief? People walk and talk, and come and go more than ever. Finally the Alcalde finds a man without his daughter, and his daughter without the man, which is satisfactory for the magistrate, but not for the audience. Quiet being restored, the Alcalde tries to examine the man. Behold a venerable Alcalde, sitting in an Alcalde’s great armchair, arranging the sleeves of his Alcalde’s gown. Only in Spain do Alcaldes cling to their enormous sleeves and wear plaited lawn ruffles about the magisterial throat, a good half of an Alcalde’s business on the stage in Paris. This particular Alcalde, wheezing and waddling about like an asthmatic old man, is Vignol, on whom Potier’s mantle has fallen; a young actor who personates old age so admirably that the oldest men in the audience cannot help laughing. With that quavering voice of his, that bald forehead, and those spindle shanks trembling under the weight of a senile frame, he may look forward to a long career of decrepitude. There is something alarming about the young actor’s old age; he is so very old; you feel nervous lest senility should be infectious. And what an admirable Alcalde he makes! What a delightful, uneasy smile! what pompous stupidity! what wooden dignity! what judicial hesitation! How well the man knows that black may be white, or white black! How eminently well he is fitted to be Minister to a constitutional monarch! The stranger answers every one of his inquiries by a question; Vignol retorts in such a fashion, that the person under examination elicits all the truth from the Alcalde. This piece of pure comedy, with a breath of Molière throughout, puts the house in good humor. The people on the stage all seemed to understand what they were about, but I am quite unable to clear up the mystery, or to say wherein it lay; for the Alcalde’s daughter was there, personified by a living, breathing Andalusian, a Spaniard with a Spaniard’s eyes, a Spaniard’s complexion, a Spaniard’s gait and figure, a Spaniard from top to toe, with her poniard in her garter, love in her heart, and a cross on the ribbon about her neck. When the act was over, and somebody asked me how the piece was going, I answered, “She wears scarlet stockings with green clocks to them; she has a little foot, no larger than that, in her patent leather shoes, and the prettiest pair of ankles in Andalusia!” Oh! that Alcalde’s daughter brings your heart into your mouth; she tantalizes you so horribly, that you long to spring upon the stage and offer her your thatched hovel and your heart, or thirty thousand livres per annum and your pen. The Andalusian is the loveliest actress in Paris. Coralie, for she
