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At the Varietes they were acting the Saltimbanques, a play every line of which has passed into proverbs, which all my generation have been repeating for the last forty years. A woman of genius, Mademoiselle Rachel, had brought back its long forgotten glory to the Theatre Francais. For my part I never saw anything so absolutely perfect on the stage.
It was during this second stay in Germany that the play of the Saltimbanques they had seen suggested to the novelist the amusing nicknames which he henceforth adopted when writing to Madame Hanska's family. Anna was dubbed Zephirine; her betrothed, Gringalet; Eve, Atala; and himself, Bilboquet.
The "Saltimbanques," reproduced in L'Art for 1878, is a page of tragedy, the finest of a cruel series. M. Eugène Montrosier says of it that "The drawing is masterly, incomparably firm, the composition superb, the general impression quite of the first order."
His beloved trio, whom he had christened the "troupe Bilboquet," after the vaudeville "Les Saltimbanques," had now moved to Wiesbaden; and thither their faithful "Bilboquet," the "vetturino per amore," as Madame de Girardin laughingly called him, rushed to meet them.
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