"I will tell his mother about it," said M. Deviolaine; "and if he continues possessed with this madness, send him to me. I will take him into my office and see that he doesn't go altogether stark staring mad." And, indeed, my mother was told that very same night. When I returned from making up the portfolio, I found her in tears. M. Deviolaine had sent for her, and told her of all that had passed between M. Oudard and me that morning. Next day, the crime of which I had been guilty was public property throughout the offices. The sixty-three clerks of His Royal Highness never lost an opportunity of saying to each other as they met, "Have you heard what Dumas said to M. Oudard yesterday?" And the clerk to whom the question was addressed would reply with either a Yes or a No. If he replied in the negative, the story was related with corrections, embellishments and exaggerations, that did the greatest credit to the imagination of my colleagues. During the whole day and for several days to follow, homeric laughter could be heard throughout the corridors of the Maison de la rue Saint-Honoré No. 216. There was one solitary book-keeping clerk who had only been engaged the previous day, and whom no one as yet knew, who did not laugh. "Why," said the others to him, "you aren't laughing." "No." "Why don't you laugh?" "Because it doesn't seem to me a laughing matter." "What! Don't you think it a huge joke that Dumas said he would do better things than Casimir Delavigne?" "In the first place, he did not say he would do better, he said he would do something different." "It is all the same." "No, it is quite different." "But do you know Dumas?" "Yes, and because I know him I tell you he will do something; I don't know what it will be, but I tell you that that something will astonish everybody, save myself." This employé, who had just joined the office, in the book-keeping department, was my old German and Italian master, Amédeé de la Ponce. So there were two people out of the seventy-two persons, heads and employés, who composed His Royal Highness's official staff, who did not despair of me! Lassagne and he. From this time began the warfare of which Lassagne had warned me when I first entered the office. But, no matter what the war was going to be like, or how long it was going to last, I made up my mind to fight to the end. A week later, a ray of comfort came to me. Vulpian came to tell Lassagne and me that our play had been accepted by the theatre of the Porte-Saint-Martin for Serres' début. So it will be seen I was gently drawing nearer to the Théâtre-Français, but I had learnt Italian enough to understand the 1 proverb, "_Che va piano va sano._" The author's rights were also higher. The theatre of the Porte-Saint-Martin paid eighteen francs for a vaudeville, and allowed twelve francs' worth of tickets. So this meant for me eight francs per night instead of six;--exactly double, this time, what my office work brought me in.