The first made was produced at the Vaudeville in 1832, and was based on the story of _Colonel Chabert_, which under another title, _The Compromise_, had finished as a serial in the March _Artiste_ of the same year. In Balzac's tale--the one of the novels that contains most real pathos--the Colonel, who is a Count of the Empire, is left for dead on the battlefield of Eylau, with wounds that disfigure him dreadfully. Rescued, and sojourning for a long while in German hospitals, he ultimately returns to France, but only to find his wife, who believes him dead, married to another nobleman. Treated as an imposter by everybody save a former non-commissioned officer of his regiment, he falls into poverty and wretchedness, and dies in a hospice, whilst his wife continues to live rich and honoured. Jacques Arago and Louis Lurine, who composed the play, altered the denouement. The husband is pensioned off by his wife, who, however, suffers for her hard-heartedness, being afterwards deserted by her second husband. A second version of the same subject was produced twenty years later at the Beaumarchais Theatre by Faulquemont, and, in 1888, a third at Brussels. _Eugenie Grandet_ was staged as a comedy, at the Gymnase in 1835, by Bayard and Paulin, who dealt with the plot very freely. Eugenie, happening to lay hold of the letter telling of her uncle's intention to commit suicide, begs her father to send money enough to Paris to prevent the catastrophe. On her father's refusing, she steals one of the old man's strong-boxes and gives it to the son of a local notary, who hurries to the capital with it and reaches there in time to save Charles' father from ruin and death. As Charles has also fled with his uncle's mare on the same errand, the miser thinks he is the thief, and obtains a warrant for his arrest. But Eugenie avows everything except the name of her accomplice. Explanations occur, now that Guillaume Grandet is saved; Charles comes out of prison and marries Eugenie, whose dowry is the money that has served so good a purpose. With Bouffe in the chief role, the _Miser's Daughter_, as the piece was called, had a great popularity, and was several times revived.