At this duet, the public entered into the joke--they could not hiss, for laughing,--and the most joyous uproar reigned amongst them, till Glatigny retired as if nothing had happened, and Chevilly attempted seriously to resume his part in ‘Charlotte Corday.’ There was a serious as well as a comic tinge in Glatigny’s experiences. On one morning in February, 1869, some country folk, returning from the market at Tarbes, saw a man stretched fast asleep on the steps of the theatre. It was early dawn, and snow was gently falling. The peasants shook the sleeper, told him, when half awake, of the danger he was in by thus exposing himself, and asked him what he was doing there? ‘Well,’ said Glatigny, ‘I am waiting for the manager;’ he turned round to go to sleep again, and the country folk left him to his fate. Later in the day, he shook himself, by way of toilet and breakfast, and made his call upon the manager. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Albert Glatigny. I am a comedian and a poet. At the present moment, I have no money, but am terribly hungry. Have you any vacancy in your company, leading tragedian or lamp-cleaner?’ The manager asked him if he was perfect in the part of Pylades. ‘Thoroughly so!’ was the answer. ‘All the better,’ said the manager; ‘we play “Andromaque,” to-night; my Pylades is ill. You will replace him. Good morning!’ When the evening came, Glatigny put on the Greek costume, and entered on the stage, without knowing a single line of his part. That was nothing. When his turn came, he improvised a little reply to Pyrrhus. Glatigny now and then had a line too short by a syllable or two, but he made up for it by putting a syllable or two over measure in the line that followed. He knew the bearing of the story, and he improvised as naturally as if he were taking part in a conversation. The audience was not aware of anything unusual. The manager who, at first, was ready to tear his hair from his head, wisely let Glatigny take his own course, and when the play was ended he offered the eccentric fellow an engagement, at the stupendous salary of sixty francs a month! Never was there a man who led a more unstable and wandering life. One day, he would seem fixed in Paris; the week after he was established in Corsica; and after disappearing from the world that knew him, he would turn up again at the Café de Suède, with wonderful stories of his errant experiences. With all his mad ways there was no lack of method in Glatigny’s mind when he chose to discipline it. French critics speak with much favour of the grace and sweetness of his verses, and quote charming lines from his comedy, ‘Le Bois,’ which was successfully acted at the Odéon. Glatigny had a hard life withal. It was for bread that he became a strolling player,--that he gave some performances at the Alcazar, as an improvisatore--and, finally, that he woke up one fine morning, with republican opinions.