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Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since "Hernani," has contained a monster a delightful monster, saved by one virtue.
Without delay she was at once engaged, for Madame Darbois had the spoken and written authority of her husband to make what arrangements her daughter should desire. The Director was most complimentary to the young actress and asked what role she would care to choose for her debut. Esperance proclaimed her preference for "Dona Sol" in Hernani or "Camille" in "On ne badine pas avec l'amour."
Hernani, and all of Victor Hugo's subsequent dramas, dealt, however, with distant times and lands; and it was left to another great romantic, Alexander Dumas père, to be the first to give the modern theme a modern setting.
Victor Hugo excelled in the superb gestures appropriate to such a scene: witness the passage in Hernani, before the tomb of Charlemagne, where the obscure bandit claims the right to take his place at the head of the princes and nobles whom the newly-elected Emperor has ordered off to execution: Hernani: Dieu qui donne le sceptre et qui te le donna M'a fait duc de Segorbe et duc de Cardona, Marquis de Monroy, comte Albatéra, vicomte De Gor, seigneur de lieux dont j'ignore le compte.
After breakfast we rehearsed Mr. Craven's and Captain Shelley's and my scenes in "Hernani." I think they will do very well if they do not shy at the moment of action, or rather acting. We had some music, and then the gentlemen went out shooting. I took "The Abbot" and established myself on a hay-cock, leaving Lady Francis to her own indoor devices.
They had seen Hernani, and Regina had naturally found it hard to understand the story, even with Marcello's explanations; the more so as he himself had never seen the play before, and had come to the theatre quite sure that it must be easily comprehensible from the opera founded on it, which he had heard.
When Victor Hugo, in the opening lines of Hernani, ventured to refer to an 'escalier dérobé', and to put 'escalier' at the end of one line, and 'dérobé' at the beginning of the next, he was assailed with the kind of virulence which is usually reserved for the vilest of criminals. And the abuse had a meaning in it: it was abuse of a revolutionary.
A certain Pole employed in the enterprise was to be at Hernani, with horses in readiness to convey them to San Sebastian. There a sloop had been engaged, and was waiting their arrival.
Visions of the great first night of "Hernani" thronged tumultuously before me; my blood pulsed with something of its ancient youthful ardour as I girded my loins with black trousers for the fray, and adjusted my white tie with faltering fingers. I had half a mind to don a gilet rouge, but the reflection that my wardrobe did not boast of coloured waistcoats gave the victory to the other half.
At the moment of going to press, we have received an item of news which we dare not guarantee as authentic, because of its very improbable character. We print it, therefore, with all reserve. Yesterday evening, Dr. Delattre, the well-known surgeon, was present, with his wife and daughter, at the performance of Hernani at the Comedie Francaise.
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