A Prussian colonel, Stelim by name, wounded in a duel, is carried to the house of Henriette’s father and nursed by the lady, who falls deeply in love with her patient. The colonel recovers and returns to his duty, all unconscious of the passion which he has inspired. The lovelorn Henriette resolves to follow him, runs away from home, dressed as a man, and enlists in her colonel’s regiment. One day, she surprises her beloved in the act of kissing the hand of a strange lady, upon which, unaware that the latter is only his sister, she is so overcome by jealousy and mortification that she deserts. She is pursued, recaptured, tried by court-martial, and condemned to be shot; but, at the last moment, her secret is discovered, and all ends happily. _Henriette_ did not reach the stage of the Comédie-Française without encountering many difficulties. In the Warsaw play, Frederick the Great and his army had been treated with very scant respect; and the Prussian Ambassador now demanded that Mlle. Raucourt’s adaptation should be very strictly scrutinised, and that “all passages calculated to wound the King his master eliminated.” As there seem to have been a good many of these, it was feared, at first, that the play would be mutilated beyond recognition, even if it were not prohibited altogether. But the Prince d’Hénin left no stone unturned to rescue his mistress’s work from the claws of the censor, and, after many conferences and much correspondence, it was finally decided to spare those passages “in which the impertinence towards the King of Prussia was more remarkable for its intention than for its effect.” The play was produced on March 1, 1782, before a densely crowded house, which the authoress, by a very adroit manœuvre, had taken care to predispose in her favour. It was then the custom on first nights to reserve a large number of the _parterre_ tickets for distribution among the author’s friends, who, of course, applauded enthusiastically, no matter how coldly the production might be received by the general public. But Mlle. Raucourt refused to avail herself of this privilege, declaring that “if her drama were a good one, it would succeed on its own merits”; a decision which, we are told, was received with universal applause.[120] On the whole, the verdict of the public was favourable. “The first act,” say the _Mémoires secrets_, “was thought cold, but the second excited long, frequent, and sincere applause. The third act was also applauded, though with less enthusiasm.”