Two or three years after the first production of _Antony_, it became the piece played at all benefit performances; to such an extent that once they asked Dorval and Bocage to act it for the Palais-Royal Theatre. I forget, and it does not matter, for whom the benefit was to be performed. The play met with its accustomed success, thanks to the acting of those two great artistes; only, the manager had been told the wrong moment at which to call the curtain down! So it fell as Antony is stabbing Adèle, and robbed the audience of the final _dénoûment._ That was not what they wanted: it was the _dénoûment_ they meant to have; so, instead of going they shouted loudly for _Le dénoûment! le dénoûment!_ They clamoured to such an extent that the manager begged the actors to let him raise the curtain again, and for the piece to be concluded. Dorval, ever good-natured, resumed her pose in the armchair as the dead woman, while they ran to find Antony. But he had gone into his dressing-room, furious because they had made him miss his final effect, and withdrawing himself into his tent, like Achilles; like Achilles, too, he obstinately refused to come out of it. All the time the audience went on clapping and shouting and calling, "Bocage! Dorval!.... Dorval! Bocage!" and threatening to break the benches. The manager raised the curtain, hoping that Bocage, when driven to bay, would be compelled to come upon the stage. But Bocage sent the manager about his business. Meanwhile, Dorval waited in her chair, with her arms hung down, and head lying back. The audience waited, too, in profound silence; but, when they saw that Bocage was not coming back, they began cheering and calling their hardest. Dorval felt that the atmosphere was becoming stormy, and raised her stiff arms, lifted her bent head, rose, walked to the footlights, and, in the midst of the silence which had settled down miraculously, at the first movement she had ventured to make: "_Messieurs_" she said, "_Messieurs, je lui résistais, il m'a assassinée!_" Then she made a graceful obeisance and left the stage, hailed by thunders of applause. The curtain fell and the spectators went away enchanted. They had had their _dénoûment_, with a variation, it is true; but this variation was so clever, that one would have had to be very ill-natured not to prefer it to the original form. CHAPTER VI The inspiration under which I composed _Antony_--The Preface--Wherein lies the moral of the piece--Cuckoldom, Adultery and the Civil Code--_Quem nuptiœ demonstrant_--Why the Critics exclaimed that my Drama was immoral--Account given by the least malevolent among them--How prejudices against bastardy are overcome