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Either Balzac would be depressed with the ill-success of his fifth act, at which, according to Gozlan, he had acquitted himself so badly that Madame Dorval, the principal actress, refused to take a role in the play; or, on the other hand, his sanguine temperament would cause him to overlook the drawbacks, and to think only of the enthusiasm with which the first four acts had been received.
Plessy, Anai's, and Augustine Brohan, is constantly with me. At the Porte-Saint-Martin were Frederic Lemaltre and Madame Dorval, startling in their poignant truthfulness and dramatic power in that terrible drama Trente Ans, oil la Vie d'un Joueur. And at the Gymnase we had Rose Cheri. If I talk so much about theatres, it must be remembered that the theatre is one of our glories.
And on the third night, strange to say, there was applause for everything and everybody; all the performers had "ovations" in turn; even the ballet-girls had a share in the general glory so liberally bestowed. "What is the meaning of this?" demanded Lemaitre and Dorval of the manager: "did you not promise that your claque should be discharged?" The manager shrugged his shoulders.
Content to wait till a more complaisant director should make overtures to him, he filled in his leisure at Wierzchownia by inventing the King of Beggars, which he announced to his friend Laurent Jan as an up-to-date play flattering the all-powerful plebs; and he likewise sketched a tragedy in which Madame Dorval was to have the chief role.
His Pierrot, a sort of modified Pulchinello, was renowned; and attracted more fastidious critics to his audience than the Paris artisans whose idol he was. Since then Madame Sand had numbered among her personal friends such leading dramatic celebrities as Madame Dorval, Bocage, and Pauline Garcia. "I like actors," she says playfully, "which has scandalized some austere people.
The piece was Faust, adapted from Goethe, and was admirably performed, more especially the parts of "Mephistopheles" and "Margaret," in which Madame Dorval acts inimitably. This actress has great merit; and the earnestness of her manner, and the touching tones of her voice, give a great air of truth to her performances.
At the first hearing of this play in the green-room of the Odeon, the company had been rather disenchanted as we know, because, after reading four acts admirably, Balzac was forced to improvise the unwritten fifth, and this he did so badly that Madame Dorval, the principal actress, refused to act.
She shunned men, and sought the friendship of Marie Dorval, a clever actress who was destined afterward to break the heart of Alfred de Vigny. The two went down into the country; and there George Sand wrote hour after hour, sitting by her fireside, and showing herself a tender mother to her little daughter Solange.
I doubt very much of my friends will approve of their habitation. I confess I am by no means satisfied with it myself; and, with regard to pecuniary consideration, my engagement is not an advantageous one. Madame Dorval, of whom I have taken the house, is a character very common in France, and over which I was little calculated to have the ascendant.
Dorval, who cuts an extremely sorry figure in such a scene, exclaims, "Ah, but children! Dorval would have children! When I think that we are thrown from our very birth into a chaos of prejudices, extravagances, vices, and miseries, the idea makes me shudder!" "Dorval, you are beset by phantoms, and no wonder.
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