Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville eBook

François d'Orléans, prince de Joinville
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 403 pages of information about Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville.

Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville eBook

François d'Orléans, prince de Joinville
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 403 pages of information about Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville.
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. 
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Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.