The extraordinary favor with which this play was received marked an epoch in a small way, a return to antique ideas and themes, to more elevated subjects and modes of dealing with them. Six weeks after its appearance Sainte-Beuve writes: "We have always been rather apish in France: the Grecian, Roman and biblical tragedies which every day now brings forth are innumerable. Who will deliver me from these Greeks and Romans? Here we are overrun by them again after forty years' insurrection, and by the Hebrews to boot." The high-water mark of the author's popularity was the publication of a trifle called the _Anti-Lucrece_, which was sold in the purlieus of the Odeon: next day there was a rumor that a second _Anti-Lucrece_ was in preparation. But the tide had turned: six months later, when the theatre reopened after the summer vacation with the same tragedy, Sainte-Beuve records: "_Lucrece_ has reappeared only to die, not by the poignard, but of languor, coldness, premature old age. It is frightful how little and how fast we live in these times--works as well as men. We survive ourselves and our children: the generations are turned upside down. Here is a piece which scarcely six months ago all Paris ran to hear without being asked:... now they are tired of it already, and can find nothing in it: it is like last year's snow." The death-blow of the tragedy was given, Sainte-Beuve says, not by the dagger, but by a luckless blunder of the actor who played Lucretia's father, and who, instead of saying, _L'assassin palissant_ ("The assassin turning pale,") said, _L'assassin polisson_ ("The scamp of an assassin"); which set everybody laughing; and that was the end of it.