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Monsieur Hugo, all this is nothing to you who are in good health and well off, but we are poor miserable creatures!" * M. Harel was manager of the Porte St. Martin Theatre. Mlle. Georges lived with him. In the year 1846 there was a spectacle that caused a furore in Paris.
The next day, Harel was advertized that the authorities forbade any other presentation of the piece; and, on the 16th, the Press, following the Government's lead, were practically unanimous in anathematizing the unhappy dramatist, the Debats being particularly acrimonious, and asserting that Vautrin was a thoroughly immoral play.
"What!" cried Lemaitre in very natural surprise, "are you mocking me?" "The theatre is on the verge of bankruptcy," pleaded Harel. "How can that be? I have earned more than a million francs for it. What the devil do you do with your money?" "My dear fellow," quoth Harel, "what do you do with yours?" "Ah! that's different: I have no account to give to anybody but myself."
Capital punishment was the portion of Mme. Acquet, Flierlé, Lefebre, Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'Épine, Le Héricey, Gautier-Boismale, Lemarchand and Alexandre Buquet. The Marquise de Combray was condemned to twenty-two years' imprisonment in irons, and so were Lerouge, called Bornet, Vannier and Bureau-Placène.
One day Gautier, who tells the story, was summoned in a great hurry, and found his friend clad in his monk's habit, walking up and down his elegant attic, and shivering with impatience. "'Here is Theo at last, he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle! sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago! To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a grand drama in five acts.
As to the provinces, I tried touring last year, but it is impossible without Harel.* I don't know how to manage actors. How do you think I can get on with these evil doers? I was to have finished the 24th. I paid them on the 20th, and fled. I returned to Paris to visit poor Harel's tomb. It is frightful, a tomb! It is horrible to see his name there on the stone! Yet I did not weep.
Harel came out of hiding in the evening, and eagerly accepted his old chief's proposition, and as the latter needed some strong pole-carriers, Harel presented two friends to the "General" under the names of "Grand-Charles" and "Coeur-le-Roi."
Porcher is the man of whom Harel said: "He likes, protects and disdains Literary men." * A band of men and boys who are paid to applaud a piece or a certain actor or actress at a given signal. The applause contractor, or chef de claque, is an important factor in French theatrical affairs. Frederick has never less than fifteen dishes at his table.
De Sincleves, the cousin and sole heiress of the countess, declared that the countess, a month before her death, had written a letter to her and in it described the manner in which the black pearl was concealed. The letter disappeared the day after she received it. Who had stolen it? Again, the concierge related how she had opened the door for a person who had inquired for Doctor Harel.
After one of these engagements Pierre-François Harel, who had passed most of his time since the Quesnay robbery in a barrel sunk in the earth at the bottom of a garden was arrested in the house of a M. Lebougre, where he had gone to get some brandy and salt to dress a wound.
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