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Updated: June 3, 2025
The assistance of Madame Dorval, added to the strength of the Comédie Française company, did not, however, save from failure Madame Sand's first drama, Cosima, produced, as will be remembered, in 1840. She allowed nearly a decade to elapse before again seriously competing for theatrical honors, by a second effort in a different style, and more satisfactory in its results.
The history of life is so little known, while the appearance of evil in the universe is so glaring.... Dorval, your daughters will be modest and good; your sons noble and high-minded; all your children will be charming.... There is no fear that a cruel soul should ever grow in my bosom from stock of yours." We can hardly wonder that players were disgusted, or critics moved to wicked jests.
M. de Fénelon, who was already devoted to the conversion of the savages in the famous mission of Montreal mountain, gave the rest of his time to the training of the young Iroquois; he gathered them in a school erected by his efforts near Pointe Claire, on the Dorval Islands, which he had received from M. de Frontenac.
At this time, however, he was still tasting the joys of ownership, and was, as usual, hopeful about the future. The play was read next day in Balzac's drawing-room to Hostein, Madame Dorval, and Melingue; and Hostein accepted it under the name of "La Maratre," Madame Dorval expressing much objection to its first title.
This did not suit the petted genius. He complained to the manager. "Your horrible claque splits my ears," he cried in a fury: "I expect you to get rid of it at once. Or if not " Before his ultimatum was pronounced Madame Dorval appeared. "Are you crazy?" she said to the manager: "what is the use of these imbeciles with their hand-clapping?
It lay on the table, bearing on its first page the title, Gertrude, a Bourgeois Tragedy. The piece was a five-act one, in prose. A couple of days later, actors and actresses were assembled in Balzac's drawing-room. Madame Dorval pursed her lips at the words, Gertrude, tragedy. "Don't interrupt," cried the author, laughing. However, after the reading of the second act they had to interrupt.
The counterpart to the scene in which Constance persuades Dorval that they would be very happy in one case, is the scene in which Dorval persuades Rosalie that they would be very unhappy in another case. The situations in themselves may command our approval morally, but they certainly do not attract our sympathies dramatically.
But the leading artists demanded it, and the manager notified his claqueurs that their pay was stopped. That night not a ripple of applause disturbed the monotony of the performance. The public, left to itself, and accustomed to have a gang of paid worthies to start the applause at the right moment, applauded neither Lemaitre nor Dorval, nor any of the other players.
He became impatient of all restraint, jealous of all honor offered to his confrères. The Ambigu won him away from the Porte Saint-Martin after a short time, and on the stage of his first successes he was supported by Madame Dorval, one of the finest actresses the French stage has known. These two dramatic powers did wonders, and the public divided its applause between them.
This piece has excited a considerable sensation at Paris; and the part of the heroine, "Charlotte Corday," being enacted by Madame Dorval, a very clever actress, it is very popular.
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