These journals were the _Figaro_ and the _Sylphe._ They were edited by Nestor Roqueplan, Alphonse Royer, Louis Desnoyers, Alphonse Karr, Vaillant, Dovalle and a dozen other bold champions of the Romantic school. I invited them all to meet in Nestor Roqueplan's rooms, also asking Lassagne and Firmin to join us. In those days Nestor Roqueplan was not magnificently lodged in his apartments at the Opéra; his salons were not ornamented by Boule, nor were the corner-stones from Coromandel. He had a small room on the fifth floor, with a chimneypiece ornamented with a washhand basin, in lieu of a clock, and duelling pistols instead of candlesticks. Nearly a score of us were packed in this room; we laid out the mattresses from the bed on the floor to form divans; we transformed the bedstead into a sofa. I stood before a table lit by plain candles; the kettle was put on the fire so that each act could be divided by a cup of tea--and I began. This time, I was dealing with men of daring opinions, and their advice was therefore exactly the opposite: they all declared with one accord that I ought to abandon _Christine_ to her unhappy lot and to push forward _Henri III._ Firmin was enchanted; he could understand the part of Saint-Mégrin much better than he had been able to enter into that of Monaldeschi. He undertook to ask for a reading for me and to hurry one forward. In the meantime, if I were willing, he would gather his fellow-actors together at his own house, so that I could read my play to them before the definitive reading at the Théâtre-Français. I felt beside myself with my success; I would have read it fifty times had I been asked to do so. I placed myself in his hands and told him to do whatever he wished. As I was going away, Lassagne caught me by the arm. "My friend," he said, "you were only half right in the matter of _Christine_; you are altogether right in _Henri III._"