ous authors of the play he so vilified.

Lassagne, a genial colleague in the office, not only put me in the way
of doing my work, which I quickly picked up, but was good enough also to
guide my reading, for I was deplorably ignorant. In those days Scribe
was the great dramatist, producing innumerable clever plots of intrigue,
modelled on no natural society, but on a society all his own, composed
almost exclusively of colonels, young widows, old soldiers, and faithful
servants. No one had ever seen such widows and colonels, never soldiers
spoke as these did, never were servants so devoted; yet this society of
Scribe's was all the fashion.

The men most highly placed in literature at the time when I came to
Paris were MM. de Chateaubriand, Jouy, Lemercier, Arnault, Etienne,
Baour-Lormian, Beranger, Charles Nodier, Viennet Scribe, Theaulon,
Soumet, Casimir Delavigne, Lucien Arnault, Ancelot, Lamartine, Victor
Hugo, Desaugiers, and Alfred de Vigny. After them came names half
literary, half political, such as MM. Cousin, Salvandy, Yillemain,
Thiers, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, Mignet, Vitet, Cave, Merimee, and
Guizot. Others, who were not yet known, but were coming forward, were
Balzac, Soulie, De Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Auguste Barbier, Alphonse Karr,
Theophile Gautier. Madame Sand was not known until her "Indiana," in
1828. I knew all this constellation, some of them as friends and
supporters, others as enemies.

In December, 1823, Talma made perhaps the greatest success of his life
in Delavigne's "L'Ecole des Vieillards," in which his power of
modulating his voice to the various emotions of old age was superbly
shown. But Talma was never content with his triumphs; he awaited eagerly
the rise of a new drama; and when I confided to him my ambitions, he
would urge me to be quick and succeed within his day. Art was all that
he lived for. How wonderful a thing is art, more faithful than a friend
or lover!

On the first day of 1824 I rose to be a regular clerk at 1,500 francs,
and determined to bring up my mother from the country. It was now nine
months since I had seen her. So she sold her tobacco shop and came up to
Paris with a little furniture and a hundred louis. We were both very
glad to be united, though she was anxious about my future.

I had by this time learned my ignorance of much that was necessary to my
success as a dramatist, and began to devote every hour of my leisure to
study, attending the theatre as often