Amedee has been working mostly upon his drama, for the Comedie-Francaise this summer, and it is nearly done; it is a modern drama in verse, entitled L’Atelier.  The action is very simple, like that of a tragedy, but he believes it is sympathetic and touching, and it ends in a popular way.  Amedee thinks he has used for his dialogue familiar but nevertheless poetic lines, in which he has not feared to put in certain graphic words and energetic speeches from the mouths of working-people.

The grateful poet has destined the principal role for Jocquelet, who has made a successful debut in the ‘Fourberies de Scapin’, and who, since then, has won success after success.  Jocquelet, like all comic actors, aspires to play also in drama.  He can do so in reality, but under particular conditions; for in spite of his grotesque nose, he has strong and spirited qualities, and recites verses very well.  He is to represent an old mechanic, in his friend’s work, a sort of faubourg Nestor, and this type will accommodate itself very well to the not very aristocratic face of Jocquelet, who more and more proves his cleverness at “making-up.”  However, at first the actor was not satisfied with his part.  He fondles the not well defined dream of all actors, he wishes, like all the others, the “leading part.”  They do not exactly know what they mean by it, but in their dreams is vaguely visible a wonderful Almanzor, who makes his first entrance in an open barouche drawn by four horses harnessed a la Daumont, and descends from it dressed in tight-fitting gray clothes, tasselled boots, and decorations.  This personage is as attractive as Don Juan, brave as Murat, a poet like Shakespeare, and as charitable as St. Vincent de Paul.  He should have, before the end of the first act, crushed with love by one single glance, the young leading actress; dispersed a dozen assassins with his sword; addressed to the stars—­that is to say, the spectators in the upper gallery—­a long speech of eighty or a hundred lines, and gathered up two lost children under the folds of his cloak.

A “fine leading part” should also, during the rest of the piece, accomplish a certain number of sublime acts, address the multitude from the top of a staircase, insult a powerful monarch to his face, dash into the midst of a conflagration—­always in the long-topped boots.  The ideal part would be for him to discover America, like Christopher Columbus; win pitched battles, like Bonaparte, or some other equally senseless thing; but the essential point is, never to leave the stage and to talk all the time—­the work, in reality, should be a monologue in five acts.

This role of an old workman, offered to Jocquelet by Amedee, obtained only a grimace of displeasure from the actor.  However, it ended by his being reconciled to the part, studying it, and, to use his own expression, “racking his brains over it,” until one day he ran to Violette’s, all excited, exclaiming: