Dumas' Paris Part 10

"At twelve the guard before Danglars' cell was replaced by another functionary, and, wis.h.i.+ng to catch sight of his new guardian, Danglars approached the door again. He was an athletic, gigantic bandit, with large eyes, thick lips, and a flat nose; his red hair fell in dishevelled ma.s.ses like snakes around his shoulders. 'Ah!

ah!' cried Danglars, 'this fellow is more like an ogre than anything else; however, I am rather too old and tough to be very good eating!'

We see that Danglars was quite collected enough to jest; at the same time, as though to disprove the ogreish propensities, the man took some black bread, cheese, and onions from his wallet, which he began devouring voraciously. 'May I be hanged,' said Danglars, glancing at the bandit's dinner through the crevices of the door, 'may I be hanged if I can understand how people can eat such filth!' and he withdrew to seat himself upon his goatskin, which recalled to him the smell of the brandy....

"Four hours pa.s.sed by, the giant was replaced by another bandit.

Danglars, who really began to experience sundry gnawings at the stomach, rose softly, again applied his eye to the crack of the door, and recognized the intelligent countenance of his guide. It was, indeed, Peppino, who was preparing to mount guard as comfortably as possible by seating himself opposite to the door, and placing between his legs an earthen pan, containing chick-pease stewed with bacon.

Near the pan he also placed a pretty little basket of grapes and a bottle of Vin d'Orvieto. Peppino was decidedly an epicure. While witnessing these preparations, Danglars' mouth watered.... 'I can almost imagine,' said he, 'that I were at the Cafe de Paris.'"

Dumas, like every strong personality, had his friends and his enemies. It is doubtful which cla.s.s was in the ascendency as to numbers. When asked, on one occasion, when he had been dining at the Cafe de Paris, if he were an archaeologist,--he had been admiring a cameo portrait of Julius Caesar,--he replied, "No, I am absolutely nothing." His partisans were many, and they were as devoted as his enemies were jealous and uncharitable. Continuing, he said, "I admire this portrait in the capacity of Caesar's historian." "Indeed," said his interlocutor, "it has never been mentioned in the world of savants." "Well," said Dumas, "the world of savants never mentions me."

This may be conceit or modesty, accordingly as one takes one view or another. Dumas, like most people, was not averse to admiration. Far from it. He thrived exceedingly on it. But he was, as he said, very much alone, and quite felt a n.o.body at times. Of his gastronomic and epicurean abilities he was vainly proud.

The story is told of the sole possession by Dumas of a certain recipe for stewed carp. Veron, the director of the opera, had instructed his own cook to serve the celebrated dish; she, unable to concoct it satisfactorily, announced her intention of going direct to the novelist to get it from his own lips. Sophie must have been a most ingenious and well-informed person, for she approached Dumas in all hostility and candour. She plunged direct into the subject, presuming that he had acquired the knowledge of this special tidbit from some outside source.

Dumas was evidently greatly flattered, and gave her every possible information, but the experiment was not a success, and the fair _cordon-bleu_ began to throw out the suspicion that Dumas had acquired his culinary accomplishments from some other source than that he had generally admitted. It was at this time that Dumas was at the crux of his affairs with his collaborators.

Accordingly Sophie made her p.r.o.nouncement that it was with Dumas' cooking as it was with his romances, and that he was "_un grand diable de vaniteux_."

At his home in the Rue Chaussee d'Antin Dumas served many an epicurean feast to his intimates; preparing, it is said, everything with his own hands, even to the stripping of the cabbage-leaves for the _soupe aux choux_, "sleeves rolled up, and a large ap.r.o.n around his waist."

A favourite menu was _soupe aux choux_, the now famous carp, a _ragout de mouton, a l'Hongroise_; _roti de faisans_, and a _salade j.a.ponaise_--whatever that may have been; the ices and _gateaux_ being sent in from a _patissier's_.

The customs of the theatre in Paris are, and always have been, peculiar.

Dumas himself tells how, upon one occasion, just after he had come permanently to live there, he had placed himself beside an immense _queue_ of people awaiting admission to the Porte St. Martin.

He was not aware of the procedure of lining up before the entrance-doors, and when one well up in the line offered to sell him his place for _twenty sous_--held since midday--Dumas willingly paid it, and, not knowing that it did not include admission to the performance, was exceedingly distraught when the time came to actually pay for places. This may seem a simple matter in a later day, and to us who have become familiar with similar conditions in Paris and elsewhere; but it serves to show the guilelessness of Dumas, and his little regard for business procedure of any sort.

The incident is continued in his own words, to the effect that he "finally purchased a bit of pasteboard that once had been white, which I presented to the check-taker and received in return another of red.... My appearance in the amphitheatre of the house must have been astonis.h.i.+ng. I was the very latest Villers-Cotterets fas.h.i.+on, but a revolution had taken place in Paris which had not yet reached my native place. My hair was long, and, being frizzled, it formed a gigantic aureole around my head. I was received with roars of laughter.... I dealt the foremost scoffer a vigorous slap in the face, and said, at the same time, 'My name is Alexandre Dumas. For to-morrow, I am staying at the Hotel des Vieux-Augustins, and after that at No. 1 Place des Italiens.'"

By some incomprehensible means Dumas was hustled out of the theatre and on to the sidewalk--for disturbing the performance, though the performance had not yet begun. He tried his luck again, however, and this time bought a place at two francs fifty centimes.

Every visitor to Paris has recognized the preeminence of the "Opera" as a social inst.i.tution. The National Opera, or the Theatre Imperial de l'Opera, as it was originally known, in the Rue Lepelletier, just off the Boulevard des Italiens, was the progenitor of the splendid establishment which now terminates the westerly end of the Avenue de l'Opera. The more ancient "Grand Opera" was uncontestably the most splendid, the most pompous, and the most influential of its contemporary inst.i.tutions throughout Europe.

The origin of the "Grand Opera" was as remote as the times of Anne of Austria, who, it will be recalled, had a most pa.s.sionate regard for _musique_ and spectacle, and Mazarin caused to be brought from Italy musicians who represented before the queen "musical pieces" which proved highly successful.

Later, in 1672, Louis XIV. accorded the privilege of the Opera to Lulli, a distinguished musician of Florence, and the theatre of the Palais Royal was ceded to the uses of Academie de Musique.

After the fire of 1763, the Opera was transferred to the Tuileries, but removed again, because of another fire, to the Porte St. Martin, where it remained until 1794, when it was transferred to a new house which had been constructed for it in the Rue Richelieu.

Again in 1820 it was removed to a new establishment, which had been erected on the site of the former Hotel de Choiseul.

This house had accommodations for but two thousand spectators, and, in spite of its sumptuousness and rank, was distinctly inferior in point of size to many opera-houses and theatres elsewhere.

Up to this time the management had been governed after the manner of the old regime, "by three gentlemen of the king's own establishment, in concurrence with the services of a working director," and the royal privy purse was virtually responsible for the expenses. Louis-Philippe astutely s.h.i.+fted the responsibility to the public exchequer.

In 1831, Dr. Louis Veron, the founder of the _Revue de Paris_,--since supplanted by the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,--became the manager and director. Doctor Veron has been called as much the quintessence of the life of Paris of the first half of the nineteenth century as was Napoleon I. of the history of France.

Albert Vandam, the author of "An Englishman in Paris," significantly enough links Veron's name in his recollections with that of Dumas, except that he places Dumas first.

"Robert le Diable" and Taglioni made Veron's success and his fortune, though he himself was a master of publicity. From 1831 onward, during Veron's inc.u.mbency, the newspapers contained column after column of the "puff personal," not only with respect to Veron himself, but down through the galaxy of singers and dancers to the veriest stage-carpenter, scenic artist, and call-boy.

The modern managers have advanced somewhat upon these premature efforts; but then the art was in its infancy, and, as Veron himself was a journalist and newspaper proprietor, he probably well understood the gentle art of exchanging favouring puffs of one commodity for those of another.

These were the days of the first successes of Meyerbeer, Halevy, Auber, and Duprez; of Taglioni, who danced herself into a nebula of glory, and later into a shadow which inspired the spiteful critics into condemnation of her waning power.

It has been said that Marie Taglioni was by no means a good-looking woman.

Indeed, she must have been decidedly plain. Her manners, too, were apparently not affable, and "her reception of Frenchmen was freezing to a degree--when she thawed it was to Russians, Englishmen, or Viennese." "One of her shoulders was higher than the other, she limped slightly, and, moreover, waddled like a duck." Clearly a stage setting was necessary to show off her charms. She was what the French call "_une pimbeche_."

The architectural effect produced by the exterior of this forerunner of the present opera was by no means one of monumental splendour. Its architect, Debret, was scathingly criticized for its anomalies. A newspaper anecdote of the time recounts the circ.u.mstance of a provincial who, upon asking his way thither, was met with the direction, "That way--the first large gateway on your right."

Near by was the establishment of the famous Italian _restaurateur_, Paolo Broggi, the resort of many singers, and the Estaminet du Divan, a sort of humble counterpart of the Cafe Riche or the Cafe des Anglais, but which proclaimed a much more literary atmosphere than many of the bigger establishments on the boulevards. Vandam relates of this house of call that "it is a positive fact that the _garcon_ would ask, 'Does monsieur desire Sue's or Dumas' _feuilleton_ with his _cafe_?'"

Of the Opera which was burned in 1781, Dumas, in "The Queen's Necklace,"

has a chapter devoted to "Some Words about the Opera." It is an interesting, albeit a rather superfluous, interpolation in a romance of intrigue and adventure:

"The Opera, that temple of pleasure at Paris, was burned in the month of June, 1781. Twenty persons had perished in the ruins; and, as it was the second time within eighteen years that this had happened, it created a prejudice against the place where it then stood, in the Palais Royal, and the king had ordered its removal to a less central spot. The place chosen was La Porte St. Martin.

"The king, vexed to see Paris deprived for so long of its Opera, became as sorrowful as if the arrivals of grain had ceased, or bread had risen to more than seven sous the quartern loaf. It was melancholy to see the n.o.bility, the army, and the citizens without their after-dinner amus.e.m.e.nt; and to see the promenades thronged with the unemployed divinities, from the chorus-singers to the prima donnas.

"An architect was then introduced to the king, full of new plans, who promised so perfect a ventilation, that even in case of fire no one could be smothered. He would make eight doors for exit, besides five large windows placed so low that any one could jump out of them. In the place of the beautiful hall of Moreau he was to erect a building with ninety-six feet of frontage toward the boulevard, ornamented with eight caryatides on pillars forming three entrance-doors, a bas-relief above the capitals, and a gallery with three windows. The stage was to be thirty-six feet wide, the theatre seventy-two feet deep and eighty across, from one wall to the other. He asked only seventy-five days and nights before he opened it to the public.

"This appeared to all a mere gasconade, and was much laughed at. The king, however, concluded the agreement with him. Lenoir set to work, and kept his word. But the public feared that a building so quickly erected could not be safe, and when it opened no one would go.

"Even the few courageous ones who did go to the first representation of 'Adele de Ponthieu' made their wills first. The architect was in despair. He came to the king to consult him as to what was to be done.

"It was just after the birth of the dauphin; all Paris was full of joy. The king advised him to announce a gratuitous performance in honour of the event, and give a ball after. Doubtless plenty would come, and if the theatre stood, its safety was established.

"'Thanks, Sire,' said the architect.

"'But reflect, first,' said the king, 'if there be a crowd, are you sure of your building?'

"'Sire, I am sure, and shall go there myself.'

"'I will go to the second representation,' said the king.

"The architect followed this advice. They played 'Adele de Ponthieu'

to three thousand spectators, who afterward danced. After this there could be no more fear."

It was three years after that Madame and the cardinal went to the celebrated ball, the account of which follows in the subsequent chapter of the romance.

Dumas as a dramatist was not so very different from Dumas the novelist.

When he first came to Paris the French stage was by no means at a low and stagnant ebb--at least, it was not the thin, watery concoction that many English writers would have us believe; and, furthermore, the world's great dramatist--Shakespeare--had been and was still influencing and inspiring the French playwright and actor alike.

It was the "Hamlet" of Ducis--a very French Hamlet, but still Hamlet--and the memory of an early interview with Talma that first set fire to the fuel of the stage-fever which afterward produced Dumas the dramatist.

Dumas was not always truthful, or, at least, correct, in his facts, but he did not offend exceedingly, and he was plausible; as much so, at any rate, as Scott, who had erred to the extent of fifteen years in his account of the death of Amy Robsart.

In 1824 was born Alexandre Dumas _fils_, and at this time the parent was collaborating with Soulie in an attempted, but unfinished, dramatization of Scott's "Old Mortality."