her voice. I rang for the third
time, and as a door opened within, the mysterious sounds doubled in
volume. Then the outer door opened, and the Baron's old servant hurried
me in. "Come in, sir," she said, "come in; the Baron is longing for you
to come!" I found Baron Taylor in his bath, and beside him a playwright
reading a tragedy. The fellow had insisted on entering, had caught the
examiner of plays in his bath, and was inflicting on him a play of over
two thousand lines! Undaunted by the Baron's rage, and unmoved by my
arrival, he proceeded with his reading, while I waited in the bedroom.

When Baron Taylor at last came in and got into bed, he was shivering
with cold, and I proposed to put off my reading; but he would not hear
of it, and trembling, I began my play. At the end of each act the Baron
himself asked for the next, and when it was finished he leapt from bed
and called for his clothes that he might go and arrange for an immediate
hearing before the committee at the Francais.

And so a special meeting was called, and I read "Christine" to a
gathering of the greatest actors and actresses of the time, all fully
dressed as if for a dance. I have rarely seen a play meet with so great
a success at this ordeal; I was off my head with pleasure; the play was
accepted by acclamation. I ran home to our rooms to tell my mother the
great news of this great day, April 30, 1828, and then back to the
office to copy out a heap of papers.

"Christine" was not, however, produced at this time. Another play on the
same subject, written by a M. Brault, had also been accepted by the
committee, and its author was suffering from an illness from which it
was impossible that he should recover. Under these circumstances it was
felt right to present the dying man's play while he was able to see it,
and I willingly acceded to the requests, made by his son and friends,
that my work should stand aside.

_IV.--Dumas Arrives_

But now, by a happy chance, in a book that lay open on a table in the
office, I came across the suggestions for my "Henry III."; and as soon
as the plot had grown clear in my mind, I wrote the play in a couple of
months. I was only twenty-five, and this was only my second play; yet it
is as well constructed as any of the fifty which I have since written.

Beranger, the great poet of democracy, and a man at that time of
unrivalled influence, was present at a private reading of "Henry III.,"
and foretold its gr