As in the case of _Christine_, the papers immediately published the news of my reception, and as in the case of _Christine_ there was a great commotion about it in the offices. However, nothing was said to me at first. Thanks to the easy means of communication between the Committee and my little office, Firmin called on me several times, and my subsequent absences after his calls, which had reference to various difficulties that arose about distribution of parts or the _mise en scène_, having been noted, an accusation was concocted against me of a sufficiently grave nature to constitute a charge of insubordination. Consequently, I received one morning, through the agency of Féresse, a request to step upstairs and appear before the director-general. M. de Broval received me with a severe look that boded a storm. I was at once reminded of M. Lefèvre and his discourse on the well organised machine, and the wheel, which, small though it was, prevented the whole from working. Alas! for the last six years I had not grown into a much larger wheel, and I felt as small before M. de Broval as I had done before M. Lefèvre. But there was something stirring in the depths of my being that was growing, and that was a self-confidence which six years of work had given me and the reception of my two plays _Christine_ and _Henri III._ So I awaited the tempest with a calmness that surprised and almost disconcerted M. de Broval. At length, in dulcet tones, he explained to me that literature and official work were incompatible and that, knowing how, in spite of the natural antipathy between them, I had been endeavouring to combine them, he requested me to make my choice between the two. M. de Broval was a fine talker, for he had been a third-class clerk in the diplomatic service. On great days he wore, as I believe I have mentioned, a coat with a braided collar, and on this coat the medal of Saint-Janvier, which he had received on the marriage of the Duc d'Orléans with the daughter of Ferdinand of Sicily; on ordinary days, he dressed like everybody else. One of his shoulders was higher than the other and he had a big red nose. I was always unlucky with deformed persons. I knew that the time had come when I must stake my last throw; I let M. de Broval proceed with the rounding off of his sentences, and his greatly beloved climaxes, until he had finished, and then I said-- "Monsieur le Baron, as far as I have been able to follow your discourse, I gather you leave me the choice between my place as copying clerk and my vocation as a literary man." "That is so, Dumas," the baron replied.