But the day and the appointed hour had come for all those poets who had escaped the notice of M. de Fontanes and Napoleon's munificent offers. They were springing up, blossoming and glowing like hawthorn in the month of May; and their names had already begun to give promise of the immense sensation they were to create in the future. Their names were Lamartine, Hugo, de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Méry, Soulié, Barbier, Alfred de Musset, Balzac; these were already filling, at the cost of their heart's blood, that great and unique stream of poetry from which France and Europe and the whole world were to drink during the nineteenth century. But the movement was taking place not only amidst that _pléiade_ which I have just named; a whole host of others was fighting, each helping forward the general cause by separate attacks, to make a breach in the walls of the old school of poetry. Dittmer and Cavé were publishing the _Soirées de Neuilly_; Vitet, the _Barricades_ and the _États de Blois_; Mérimée the _Théâtre de Clara Gazul._ And note carefully that all these movements took place away from the stage whereon the real struggle took place, and apart from its manifestations. The real struggle was that in which I, and Victor Hugo (I put myself first for chronological reasons) were to take part. I was preparing for it not only by the continuation of my _Christine_, but still more by studying humanity as a whole, combined with individual characterisations. I have referred to the immense service the English actors had done me; Macready, Kean, Young had in turn completed the work begun by Kemble and Miss Smithson. I had seen _Hamlet_, _Romeo_, _Shylock_, _Othello_, _Richard III._ and _Macbeth._ I had read and devoured not only the whole of Shakespeare, but even the whole of the foreign dramatic output. I had recognised that, in the theatrical world, everything emanated from Shakespeare, just as in the external world everything owes its existence to the sun; that nothing could be compared with him; for, coming before everyone else, he was yet as supreme in tragedy as Corneille, in comedy as Molière, as original as Calderon, as full of thought as Goethe, as passionate as Schiller. I realised that his works contained as many types as the works of all the others put together. I recognised, in short, that, after the Creator Himself, Shakespeare had created more than any other being. As I have stated, when I saw these English artists, actors who forgot that they were on a stage,--the life of the imagination became actual life through the power of Art; their convincing words and gestures seeming to transform them from actors into creatures of God, with their virtues and their vices, their passions and their failings,--from that moment my career was decided. I felt I had received that special call which comes to every man. I felt a confidence in my own powers that I had lacked until then, and I boldly hurled myself upon the unknown future that had hitherto held