This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By FRANCOIS COPPEE
Success, which usually is as fickle as justice, took long strides anddoubled its stations in order to reach Amedee. The Cafe de Seville, andthe coterie of long-haired writers, were busying themselves with therising poet already. His suite of sonnets, published in La Guepe,pleased some of the journalists, who reproduced them in portions in well-distributed journals. Ten days after Amedee's meeting with Jocquelet,the latter recited his poem "Before Sebastopol" at a magnificententertainment given at the Gaite for the benefit of an illustrious actorwho had become blind and reduced to poverty.
This "dramatic solemnity," to use the language of the advertisement,began by being terribly tiresome. There was an audience present who wereaccustomed to grand Parisian soirees, a blase and satiated public, who,upon this warm evening in the suffocating theatre, were more fatigued andsatiated than ever. The sleepy journalists collapsed in their chairs,and in the back part of the stage-boxes, ladies' faces, almost greenunder paint, showed the excessive lassitude of a long winter of pleasure.The Parisians had all come there from custom, without having theslightest desire to do so, just as they always came, like galley-slavescondemned to "first nights." They were so lifeless that they did noteven feel the slightest horror at seeing one another grow old. Thischloroformed audience was afflicted with a long and too heavy programme,as is the custom in performances of this kind. They played fragments ofthe best known pieces, and sang songs from operas long since fallen intodisuse even on street organs. This public saw the same comedians marchout; the most famous are the most monotonous; the comical ones abusedtheir privileges; the lover spoke distractedly through his nose; thegreat coquette—the actress par excellence, the last of the Celimenes—discharged her part in such a sluggish way that when she began an adverbending in "ment," one would have almost had time to go out and smoke acigarette or drink a glass of beer before she reached the end of the saidadverb.
But at the most lethargic moment of this drowsy soirees, after thecomedians from the Francais had played in a stately manner one actfrom a tragedy, Jocquelet appeared. Jocquelet, still a pupil at theConservatoire, showed himself to the public for the first time and by anexceptional grace—Jocquelet, absolutely unknown, too short in hisevening clothes, in spite of the two packs of cards that he had put inhis boots. He appeared, full of audacity, riding his high horse, raisinghis flat-nosed, bull-dog face toward the "gallery gods," and, in hisvoice capable of making Jericho's wall fall or raising Jehoshaphat'sdead, he dashed off in one effort, but with intelligence and heroicfeeling, his comrade's poem.
The effect was prodigious. This bold, common, but powerful actor, andthese picturesque and modern verses were something entirely new to thispublic satiated with old trash. What a happy surprise! Two novelties atonce! To think of discovering an unheard-of poet and an unknowncomedian! To nibble at these two green fruits! Everybody shook off historpor; the anaesthetized journalists aroused themselves; the colorlessand sleepy ladies plucked up a li