United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A few days after the Revolution, Theodore Cogniard, manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin Theater, wrote to Balzac and proposed to reproduce Vautrin. Balzac, in replying, referred to Lemaitre's toupet, and explained that, when disguising Vautrin as a Mexican general, he had in his mind General Murat.
Whereupon the lion, who was waiting on all fours to make his entrance, straightened himself, took off his head, and said, "I'll play it if you like." "You?" "I, who know the part." "Well roared, lion!" quoth the manager: "I accept your offer." This was Lemaitre's first essay in a speaking part.
But inwardly I rejoiced at their eagerness to lay us low, for in their hurry they aimed badly. We had almost reached our shelter when I suddenly saw to the right of me "Ramier," Lemaître's horse, fall like a log.
An example given by M. Sarcey himself will, I think, make the matter quite clear. M. Jules Lemaître's play, Révoltée, tells the story of a would-be intellectual, ill-conditioned young woman, married to a plain and ungainly professor of mathematics, whom she despises.
Saturday is the usual pay-day in French theatres, and it was one of the first illustrations of the eccentricity of Lemaitre's character that he took a whim to have himself paid every Saturday in silver five-franc pieces. Then throwing over his shoulder the bag of money, he would walk proudly through the crowd which was waiting to see him at the door of the theatre.
"You have not proved that," replied Jean, with an attorney's obstinacy. "You should have heard him talk the other day about that newspaper paragraph I have taken Ursin Lemaitre's head; I have it with me; I claim the reward, but I desire to commute it to citizenship. He is crazy."
He once made a bet that he could take off his wig on the stage without his audience getting angry. No American play-goer, unacquainted with the temper of French audiences, their reverence for stage decorum, can fully appreciate what a defiance of public sentiment this was on Lemaitre's part. He did it, however, and the action was received in silence.
Similar stories are related of Edmund Kean, and the resemblance in the private characters of the two men is most striking. Lemaitre's father was an architect. There is nothing to show that the boy displayed extraordinary mimetic genius.
I blame you not for the failure; not another man of us all would have come so near success." "Dolt! I should have known he could not deal honestly," M. Étienne cried. "I should have known he would trick me. But I did not think to doubt the crest. I should have opened it there in the inn, but it was Lemaître's sealed packet.
One of the earliest developments of Lemaitre's independence of spirit and contempt of the honeyed adjectives of critics was displayed in his refusal to pay those amiable taxes which are so much the rule in Paris, if not in all European cities. Generous enough in his own way with the abundant earnings of his art, Lemaitre declined to pay for puffery.
Word Of The Day