This event brought him an access of fresh courage, for in order to make the journey to St. Petersburg it was essential that he should first achieve a triumph, brief, brilliant and complete. He decided once again to make a bold attempt at the theatre, and the scene of battle was to be the Odeon. He offered The Resources of Quinola to the manager, Lireux, who accepted it with enthusiasm. Balzac read his comedy to its future interpreters,--notwithstanding that he had as yet written only four acts of it,--and calmly informed them that he would have to tell them the general substance of the fifth. They were amazed at such bold disregard of professional usages, but it was passed over, for Lireux was all impatience to produce The Resources and to begin the rehearsals. Warned by the failure of Vautrin, Balzac took the most minute care in arranging for the opening night audience which he relied upon to sweep Quinola heavenward on a mounting wave of glory. To begin with, he did away with the claquers and fixed the price of admission at five francs, while the general scale of prices was as follows: balcony seats twenty five francs, stalls twenty francs, seats in the open boxes of the first tier twenty-five francs, open boxes of the second tier twenty francs, closed boxes of the second tier twenty five francs, baignoir boxes twenty francs. He had no use for mere nobodies, but determined to sift out his audience from amongst the most distinguished men and women in all Paris, ministers, counts, princesses, academicians, and financiers. He included the two Princesses Troubetskoi, the Countess Leon, the Countess Nariskine, the Aguados, the Rothschilds, the Doudeauvilles, the Castries, and he decided that there should be none but pretty women in the front seats of the open boxes. And he counted upon piling up a fine little surplus, since the revenues of the box-office were in his hands for the first three nights. Alas, on the night of March 19, 1842, The Resources of Quinola met with the same reception as Vautrin had done before it; in spite of all his precautions, his enemies had gained admission to the Odeon, and throughout the whole evening, from the first act onward, there was a ceaseless storm of hisses and cat-calls. He had wasted four months, only to arrive at another defeat.