The Salt Smugglers by Gérard de Nerval Read Free Book Online Page A

it on. »
    I went to look up M. Schayé who told me: « You’re right. They don’t have a leg to stand on. We’ll send them a summons. »
    The next day I received a letter granting me an audience with the Minister of the Interior ... at five that afternoon.
    The minister received me on the run, saying, « I’ve not yet had time to read your manuscript; I’ll take it with me to the country. Please drop back in to see me the day after tomorrow at the same time. »
    I had to cool my heels to see the minister. I waited for a long time and it was quite late when I was finally ushered in. — But what would a dramatic author not do to save his play and extract it from the talons of a minister?
    The minister received me with a gruff hello and shuffled through his papers in search of my manuscript. Never having had the privilege of seeing a minister up close, I examined M. Montalivet’s handsome if somewhat overworked brow. — He belonged to that school of high functionaries of which our former king was quite fond, — one might call it the Party of the Portly. Left to his own devices, Louis-Philippe would have sacrificed
everything to these men whose physiques flattered his vision of the prosperity of the body politic. Like Caesar, who could not abide anybody thin, he was suspicious of nervous types such as M. Thiers or bilious temperaments such as M. Guizot. These were men who had been imposed upon him, — and who ended up costing him his reign ... deliberately or not. M. de Montalivet had fished out the enormous manuscript upon which my future as a playwright rested. He handed it back to me over his desk and, wisely eschewing those banal niceties so often inflicted upon writers, he said; « Here’s your play back. Go ahead and have it performed. If it causes any problems, we’ll just shut down the production. » I thanked him and took my leave.
    If I had not been informed by a number of people that M. de Montalivet cut a most affable figure on the social scene, I would have sworn that I had just had an interview with the very M. de Pontchartrain who will make an appearance in my Life of the abbé de Bucquoy .
    The problem now was how to get the play back on its feet after a number of its initial actors had quit the production. We had to wait for the closing of a play that was finishing up a successful run. It was now well into the summer season. Harel informed me that he had booked an elephant act for the following autumn so that my play would therefore only have a limited engagement.
    We nonetheless managed to get it up and running with the best actors in the troupe: Mme Mélingue, Raucourt, Mélingue, Tournan, and good old Moessard. They were all full of kindness to me and turned in fine performances, even if my play was a bit eccentric for this sort of boulevard theater.
    Meanwhile the rehearsals dragged on. A theater director is not in the best of financial health when expecting an elephant . Nor would the dog days of summer guarantee him the kind of box office success he might have expected had the play been scheduled for early winter. There was a new piece of scenery that was absolutely crucial to the production, — a backdrop representing ruins illuminated by the moon, at Eisenach, near the castle of Wartburg.
    I had dreamed of this stage set, — having seen it in reality just the previous month upon leaving the electorate of Hesse-Cassel on my way to Leipzig.
    Harel kept on reassuring me: « I’ve had the thing ordered from Cicéri. We’ll set it up when we go into our dress rehearsals. »
    It was finally set up the day before the show opened.
    The set represented a subterranean hall surmounted by statues of knights, similar to the one they used to play The Secret Tribunal at the Amibigu.
    In fact it might well have been the very same set, merely repainted.
    I had gotten it into my head that my play should include a number of songs