I hoped that de Leuven would be able to get our comedies and melodramas put upon the stage. M. de Leuven, his father, finding that no stir was made about his presence in France, made up his mind to risk returning to Paris. Adolphe naturally followed his father. His departure, which under any other circumstances would have filled me with despair, now overwhelmed me with delight, our ideas being what they were. De Leuven took away our _chefs-d'œuvre_: we never doubted that the directors of the various theatres for which they were destined would receive them with enthusiasm! Thanks to our two vaudevilles and our drama, we would turn aside a tributary of that Pactolus which, since 1822, had watered M. Scribe's dominions. I would set sail on that tributary, with my mother, and rejoin de Leuven in Paris. There a career would open before me, strewn with roses and bank-notes. It can be imagined how anxiously I waited Adolphe's first letters. These first letters were slow in coming. I began to feel uneasy. At last one morning the postman (or rather post-woman, an old dame, whom we called "Mother Colombe") turned her steps in the direction of our house. She held a letter in her hand; this letter was in Adolphe's handwriting and bore the Paris postmark. The directors--for reasons Adolphe could not fathom--did not put themselves out to make that fuss over our _chefs-d'œuvre_ he thought he had the right to expect of them. However, Adolphe did not despair of getting them a hearing. If he could not succeed in this, he would have to submit the manuscripts to the critics, which would be most humiliating! In spite of the gleams of hope which still shone through the epistle, the general tone of the letter was doleful. In conclusion, Adolphe promised to keep me well posted concerning his doings. I awaited a second letter. The second letter was more than a month in coming. And then, alas! practically all hope had fled. The _Dîner d'amis_, borrowed from M. Bouilly, had not sufficient plot; the _Major de Strasbourg_ was too much like the _Soldat Laboureur_, which had just been played at the Variétés with such great success. And as for the _Abencérages_, every boulevard theatre had received a play on that subject for the last ten, fifteen, or twenty years. Even supposing, therefore, that ours were received, it did not carry us far. Still, we had not yet lost all hope in the matter of the _Dîner d'amis_ and the _Major de Strasbourg._ After vain attempts to gain access at the Gymnase and the Varietés, we tried the Porte-Saint-Martin, the Ambigue-Comique and the Gaieté. As for the unlucky _Abencérages_, its fate was sealed. I shed as bitter a tear over it as Boabdil shed over Grenada, and I awaited Adolphe's third letter with very gloomy forebodings.