"You scoundrel! I was right where I was, near the door.... Do you believe this mad prank you have just played is going to bring you in any more than what you have just shown me?" "Certainly I do." "About how much?" "Fifteen thousand francs." "What!" "About fifteen thousand francs." "And how long will it run to gain that?" "Perhaps two months." "So in two months, you will have earned the whole year's salary of three chief clerks, including bonuses?" "Call in your three chief clerks and tell them to do as much for themselves." "Get out! I am afraid the very ceiling will fall on our heads while you are saying such monstrous things!" "To-morrow night, then?" "Yes, to-morrow night, if I have nothing better to do." I was quite easy. M. Deviolaine would not have anything better to do, nor would he have accepted a year of his salary to be kept away. From M. Deviolaine's house I ran to M. Laffitte's. I was proud to be able to pay him what I owed him so promptly. I gave him his thousand crowns, and he returned me my promissory note and my manuscript. But I always remembered the service rendered me, which, coming when my mother was taken ill, was of priceless value. Still, I had not reached the conclusion of my worries. When I returned to my temporary dwelling-place, I found a letter from the Théâtre-Français asking me to go to the office there immediately. I rushed there, and found the Committee in a state of consternation from Taylor downwards. They had received a letter from the Home Minister suspending _Henri III._ This was a far more serious matter than the suspension of my salary. Luckily, Taylor had made up his mind what should be done. He proposed I should urgently demand an audience of M. de Martignac. He himself undertook to take the letter and see that it was conveyed to him. I sat down and wrote at once, asking for an audience for the next day. I received an answer two hours later. M. de Martignac would see me at seven next morning. By seven next morning I was at his house. Oh! what a blessing it is to find a Minister who is both polished and cultivated, like M. de Martignac! _rara avis_, as Juvenal would call it, and, worse still, a bird of passage! We remained together for an hour, not talking of the play, but of all sorts of subjects; in ten minutes, we came to an understanding over the play, and I carried my manuscript back, saved, this time not from Annihilation, but from Limbo. Oh! poor M. de Martignac! how well he understood Art! How thoroughly well he knew that type of human being who obstructs all progress he meets with on the way, with a view rather of hindering others from advancing than of advancing himself! It was not under M. de Martignac's administration that Art, wherever it turned, encountered the notice, "This road is closed by order of the authorities." And to think that for twenty years the same men blocked the same avenues; that, from being old men, they grew into being decrepit ones, whilst