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He may be a Republican, and he must uphold with warmth and conviction Royalist theories. He may be a Conservative, and must maintain anarchist principles, if such be the good pleasure of the author. At the Theatre Francais poor Maubant was a most advanced Radical, and his stature and handsome face doomed him to play the parts of kings, emperors, and tyrants.
We really must have her to dine here one evening." "To be sure!" said her sister Flora, "but I haven't wasted my time either. I met such a clever old gentleman at M. Vinteuil's who knows Maubant quite well, and Maubant has told him every little thing about how he gets up his parts. It is the most interesting thing I ever heard.
"I think it would be worth while," Flora went on, "to have this old gentleman to dinner. When you get him upon Maubant or Mme. Materna he will talk for hours on end."
I thought of my rehearsing with Madame Devoyod, the leading tragedienne of the Comedie Francaise, with Maubant, with I trembled as I thought of all this, for Madame Devoyod was said to be anything but indulgent. I arrived for the rehearsal an hour before the time. The stage manager, Davenne, smiled and asked me whether I knew my role. "Oh yes," I exclaimed with conviction. "Come and rehearse it.
I dined the other night with Maubant, and when some one said that you ought to be engaged at the Comedie Francaise he nearly choked with rage. I can assure you the great tragedian did not show much affection for you." "Oh well, you ought to have taken my part," I exclaimed, irritated. "You know very well that I am a most serious member of your company."
But if the thought of actors weighed so upon me, if the sight of Maubant, coming out one afternoon from the Theatre-Francais, had plunged me in the throes and sufferings of hopeless love, how much more did the name of a 'star, blazing outside the doors of a theatre, how much more, seen through the window of a brougham which passed me in the street, the hair over her forehead abloom with roses, did the face of a woman who, I would think, was perhaps an actress, leave with me a lasting disturbance, a futile and painful effort to form a picture of her private life.
What language! the good Tourgueneff and Madame Viardot made saucer-eyes, comical to behold. In your work, what produced the greatest effect is the scene in the last act between Antoine and his daughter. Maubant is too majestic, and the actor who plays Fulgence is inadequate. But everything went very well, and this revival will have a long life.
"That must be delightful," sighed my grandfather, in whose mind nature had unfortunately forgotten to include any capacity whatsoever for becoming passionately interested in the co-operative movement among the ladies of Sweden or in the methods employed by Maubant to get up his parts, just as it had forgotten to endow my grandmother's two sisters with a grain of that precious salt which one has oneself to 'add to taste' in order to extract any savour from a narrative of the private life of Mole or of the Comte de Paris.
"The proof of the pudding," and what better proof of the value of a Dramatic Academy could be forthcoming than the brilliant work of Coquelin, Febvre, Maubant, Delaunay, Got, Worms, Laroche, Blanche Barretta, Emilie Broisat, Madeleine Brohan? Here is a group of clever men and women. There is not a genius among them.
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