han ever. The sleepy journalists collapsed in their
chairs, and in the back part of the stage-boxes, ladies' faces, almost
green under paint, showed the excessive lassitude of a long winter of
pleasure. The Parisians had all come there from custom, without
having the slightest desire to do so, just as they always came, like
galley-slaves condemned to "first nights." They were so lifeless that
they did not even feel the slightest horror at seeing one another grow
old. This chloroformed audience was afflicted with a long and too heavy
programme, as is the custom in performances of this kind. They played
fragments of the best known pieces, and sang songs from operas long
since fallen into disuse even on street organs. This public saw the
same comedians march out; the most famous are the most monotonous;
the comical ones abused their privileges; the lover spoke distractedly
through his nose; the great coquette--the actress par excellence, the
last of the Celimenes--discharged her part in such a sluggish way that
when she began an adverb ending in "ment," one would have almost had
time to go out and smoke a cigarette or drink a glass of beer before she
reached the end of the said adverb.

But at the most lethargic moment of this drowsy soirees, after the
comedians from the Francais had played in a stately manner one act
from a tragedy, Jocquelet appeared. Jocquelet, still a pupil at the
Conservatoire, showed himself to the public for the first time and by
an exceptional grace--Jocquelet, absolutely unknown, too short in his
evening clothes, in spite of the two packs of cards that he had put in
his boots. He appeared, full of audacity, riding his high horse, raising
his flat-nosed, bull-dog face toward the "gallery gods," and, in his
voice capable of making Jericho's wall fall or raising Jehoshaphat's
dead, he dashed off in one effort, but with intelligence and heroic
feeling, his comrade's poem.

The effect was prodigious. This bold, common, but powerful actor, and
these picturesque and modern verses were something entirely new to this
public satiated with old trash. What a happy surprise! Two novelties
at once! To think of discovering an unheard-of poet and an unknown
comedian! To nibble at these two green fruits! Everybody shook off his
torpor; the anaesthetized journalists aroused themselves; the colorless
and sleepy ladies plucked up a little animation; and when Jocquelet
had made the last rhyme resound like a grand flo