On 3 January 1825 he was quietly sleeping, at two in the morning. His attendants heard him cough several times; then, at eight o'clock, as he had not summoned them to him according to his usual custom, the officers of his chamber, followed by the Court doctors, entered his room, and found him dead from a stroke of apoplexy. Ferdinand I. had just reigned sixty-five years, when he died at the age of seventy-four. Oudard got his translation, which he re-copied in his own writing, and handed to the Duchesse d'Orléans as his own. True, he faithfully retailed to me the compliments he had received for it, adding that for which I was far more grateful--two tickets for the first representation of _Roman_ at the Théâtre-Français; it was a capital five-act comedy in verse, by de Laville de Miremont, already known because of _Folliculaire_, a piece more commendable for its action than for any other quality. I knew de Laville very well: an accusation by Lemercier worried him greatly. Lemercier had accused de Laville, who had occupied the post of Censor, of having suppressed his _Charles VI._ and of having afterwards used his plot and ideas. But, in the first place, de Laville plainly proved both by _Folliculaire_ and by _Roman_ that he did not need to borrow ideas from other people's plays; besides, he was utterly incapable of doing such an action. There was a charming creation in _Roman_: a father who was friendly to and almost a companion in the escapades of a son born to him when he was only twenty. Nothing could have been more natural than this situation, which de Laville was the first to employ in a play. Owing to the kindness of Talma, I had several times seen the _Cid d'Andalousie._ Casimir Delavigne's example was infectious: Talma having taken part in comedy, Mademoiselle Mars asked why she might not play in tragedy; hence the new reunion of the two actors in the _Cid d'Andalousie_. But M. Pierre Lebrun, author of an _Ulysse_ which had not been played, or what is far worse, which had only run one or two nights, was not Casimir Delavigne. There was nothing at the time to support him as there had been in 1820 when, in _Maria Stuart_, he had had the sturdy framework of Schiller to fall back upon. Reduced to drawing from Spanish romanceros, which only suggested simple scenes, he was lacking in everything--power, originality and style, and in spite of the unusual support of both Talma and Mademoiselle Mars, who had doubled the power of a strong creator and who could not conceal the weakness of a feeble writer, the _Cid d'Andalousie_ fell flat at the first representation, managed to survive the second, upheld by hired applause, dragged on miserably for five or six nights, and then finally was taken out of the bill. This failure was the beginning of the fortune of M. Pierre Lebrun--Academician, peer of France and Manager of the Royal Printing-house.