Maranne observed this ill-humour, this lassitude of the public, and thinking of all the changes which the success of his play might bring about in his simple life, he asked himself, full of a great anxiety, what he could do to bring his ideas home to those thousands of people, to pluck them away from their preoccupation, and to send through this crowd a single current which should draw to himself those absent glances, those minds of every different calibre, so difficult to move to unison.  Instinctively his eyes sought friendly faces, a box facing the stage occupied by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the younger girls seated in the front, Aline and the father in the row behind—­a charming family group, like a bouquet wet with dew amid a display of artificial flowers.  And while all Paris was disdainfully asking, “Who are those people there?” the poet instrusted his fate to those little fairy hands, new gloved for the occasion, which very soon would boldly give the signal for applause.

The curtain is going up!  Maranne has barely time to spring into the wings; and suddenly he hears as from far, very far away, the first words of his play, which rise, like a flight of timid birds, into the silence and immensity of the theatre.  A terrible moment.  Where should he go?  What should he do?  Remain there leaning against a wing, with straining ear and beating heart?  Encourage the actors when he himself stood in so much need of encouragement?  He prefers rather to look the peril in the face; and by the little door communicating with the corridor behind the boxes he slips out to a corner box, which he orders to be opened for him softly.  “Sh!  It is I.”  Some one is seated in the shadow—­a woman, she whom all Paris knows and who is hiding herself from the public gaze.  Andre sits down by her side, and so, close to one another, mother and son tremblingly watch the progress of the play.

It astonished the audience at first.  This Theatre des Nouveautes, situated in the very heart of the boulevard, where its portico glitters all illuminated among the great restaurants of the smart clubs; this theatre, to which people were accustomed to come in parties after a luxurious dinner to listen until supper-time to an act or two of some suggestive piece, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most fashionable of all Parisian entertainments, without any very precise character of its own, and partaking something of all, from the fairy-operetta which exhibits undressed women, to the serious modern drama.  Cardailhac was especially anxious to justify his title of “Manager of the Nouveautes,” and, since the Nabob’s millions had been at the back of the undertaking, had made a point of preparing for the boulevardiers the most dazzling surprises.  That of this evening surpassed them all; the piece was in verse—­and moral.

A moral play!

The old rogue had realized that the moment had arrived to try that effect, and he was trying it.  After the astonishment of the first minutes, a few disappointed exclamations here and there in the boxes, “Why, it is in verse!” the house began to feel the charm of this invigorating and healthy piece, as if there had been sprinkled on it, in its rarefied atmosphere, some fresh and pungent essence, an elixir of life perfumed with thyme from the hillside.