However, since it would be much better to go with the help' of Adolphe, I immediately inquired my way to the rue Pigale, and started off for it. After many turnings and twistings, I reached my destination at about nine in the morning. Adolphe was not yet up; but his father was walking in the garden. I went up to him. He stopped, let me approach, held out his hand to me, and said-- "So you have come to Paris, then?" "Yes, Monsieur de Leuven." "For some stay?" "For two days." "What have you come for?" "I have come to see two people--Adolphe and Talma." "Ah! is that so? You have become a millionaire, then, or you would not commit such extravagances." I told M. de Leuven how Paillet and I had accomplished the journey. He looked at me for a minute, then he said-- "You will get on, you have will-power. Go and wake Adolphe; he will take you to see Talma, who will give you tickets; then come back and lunch together here." That was the very thing I wanted. I took stock of the interior topography of the house, and rushed off. I only opened two wrong doors before I found Adolphe's: one was Gabriel Arnault's door; the other, Louis Arnault's. I lost my way on the first landing: Louis put me right. I reached Adolphe's room at last. Adolphe slept like the Seven Sleepers. But had I had to deal with Epimenides I would have wakened him. Adolphe rubbed his eyes, and could not recognise me. "Come, come," I said, "it is really I; wake up and get dressed. I want to go to Talma." "To Talma! What for? You don't mean to say you have a tragedy to read to him?" "No, but I want to ask him for some tickets." "What is he playing in now?" I fell from my state of exaltation. Adolphe, living in Paris, did not know what Talma was acting! What was the idiot thinking of? No wonder he had not yet got my _Pélerinage d'Ermenonville_ placed, or any of our plays acted. Adolphe got out of bed and dressed himself. At eleven o'clock we were ringing the bell of a house in the rue de la Tour-des-Dames. Mademoiselle Mars, Mademoiselle Duchesnois and Talma all lived side by side. Talma was dressing, but Adolphe was an habitué of the house: they let him in. I followed Adolphe, as Hernani followed Charles-Quint; I, naturally, behind Adolphe. Talma was extremely short-sighted: I do not know whether he saw me or not. He was washing his chest: his head was almost shaved--this astonished me greatly, for I had heard it said, many times, that in _Hamlet_, when the father's ghost appears, Talma's hairs could be seen standing on end. I must confess that Talma's appearance, under the above conditions, was far from being artistic. But when he turned round, with his neck bare, the lower part of his body wrapped in a large sort of white linen wrapper, and he took one of the corners of this mantle and drew it over his shoulder, half veiling his breast, there was something so regal in the action that it made me tremble.