“Thee I covered with jewels, hussy, letting thee pass for my mistress, because that kind of thing makes a good impression in our world—­but without ever asking thee anything in return.  And thou, brazen-faced journalist, who for brain hast all the dirty sediment of thy inkstand, and on thy conscience as many spots as thy queen has on her skin, thou thinkest that I have not paid thee thy price and that is why thy insults are heaped on me.  Yes, yes; stare at me, you vermin!  I am proud.  My worth is above yours.”

All that he was thus saying to himself mentally, in an ungovernable rage, visible in the quivering of his pale, thick lips.  The unfortunate man, who was nearly mad, was about perhaps to shout it aloud in the silence, to denounce that insulting crowd—­who knows?—­to spring into the midst of it, kill one of them—­ah! kill one of them—­when he felt a light tap on his shoulder, and a fair head came before his eyes, serious and frank, two hands held out, which he grasped convulsively, like a drowning man.

“Ah! dear friend, dear—­” the poor man stammered.  But he had not the strength to say more.  This emotion of joy coming suddenly in the midst of his fury melted him into a sobbing torrent of tears, and stifled words.  His face became purple.  He motioned “Take me away.”  And, stumbling in his walk, leaning on de Gery’s arm, he only managed to cross the threshold of his box before he fell prostrate in the corridor.

“Bravo!  Bravo!” cried the house in reply to the speech which the actor had just finished; and there was a noise like a hailstorm, and stamping of enthusiastic feet while the great lifeless body, raised with difficulty by the scene-shifters, was carried through the brightly lighted wings, crowded with people pressing in their curiosity round the stage, excited by the atmosphere of success and who hardly noticed the passage of the inert and vanquished man, borne on men’s arms like some victim of a riot.  They laid him on a couch in the room where the properties were stored, Paul de Gery at his side, with a doctor and two porters who eagerly lent all the assistance in their power.  Cardailhac, extremely busy over his play, had sent word that he should come to hear the news “directly, after the fifth act.”

Bleeding after bleeding, cuppings, mustard leaves—­nothing brought even a quiver to the skin of the patient, insensible apparently to all the remedies usually employed in cases of apoplexy.  The whole being seemed to be surrendering to death, to be preparing the way for the rigidity of the corpse; and this in the most sinister place in the world, this chaos, lighted by a lantern merely, amid which there lie about pell-mell in the dust all the remains of former plays—­gilt furniture, curtains with gay fringes, coaches, boxes, card-tables, dismantled staircases and balusters, among ropes and pulleys, a confusion of out-of-date theatrical properties, thrown down, broken, and damaged.