where the place of the pit was taken up by the circus
or riding school for all sorts of horsemanship, which
circus was connected with the stage by inclined planes,
whenever a military piece with battles in it was performed.
In this circus Laurent Franconi made us practise “la
haute ecole,” and his assistants. Bassin
and Lagoutte, taught us to vault on horseback, astride
and sitting, and standing upright—after
every fashion, in fact. And to our great amusement,
too, these lessons, falling as they did on Sunday
afternoons, generally coincided with the rehearsals
on the stage, in which we joyfully took our share
during the intervals we were allowed for rest, scaling
the practicable scenery, or taking part with the artists
in certain interludes not mentioned on the programme.
This was not indeed our only initiation into theatrical
art, a career bearing so much analogy to that of every
prince. Taking advantage of the close proximity
of the Palais-Royal to the Comedie-Francaise, my father
had added a regular course of dramatic literature
to the educational plan he had laid out for us.
So very often when the old stock plays were being
given at the Francais, he would take us by a door leading
from his drawing-room into the passage which separates
the side scenes from the artists’ green-room,
and leave us in his box—the three centre
ones on the grand tier thrown together—returning
to fetch us at the end of the performance. Those
evenings at the Comedie-Francaise were our greatest
joy, and taught us many a useful lesson, filling our
heads with classic literature far more efficiently
than all the reading and courses of lectures in the
world. But those unlucky classics were very much
neglected. They were not a bit the fashion.
There would hardly be two hundred people in the theatre,
and all the boxes were empty. A wretched orchestra,
conducted by a stout man of the name of Chodron, squeaked
a tune that set everybody’s teeth on edge.
Up would go the curtain, without any warning, in the
very middle of some phrase in the music which would
break off with a sigh from the clarionet, and drearily
the play would begin. We were all eyes and ears
in spite of that, and nothing in the play of the tragic
actresses—Madame Duchesnois, Madame Paradol,
and Madame Bourgoin—ever escaped us.
I can see and hear yet all Corneille’s plays,
and Racine’s too, and Zaire, and Mahomet, and
L’Orphelin de la Chine, and many more. But
what we longed for most impatiently were Moliere’s
plays. They were our prime favourites, and what
actors too! Monrose, Cartigny, Samson, Firmin,
Menjaud, and Faure, whose appearances as Fleurant
in Le Malade and Truffaldin in L’Etourdi we
always greeted with delight, on account of the properties
he carried in his hand. This same Faure, an old
soldier of 1782, never failed to say to my father,
as he escorted him to the door, taper in hand, “Ha,
Sir! this is not the camp at la Lune!” referring
to a bivouac just before the battle of Valmy.