"No, I am well aware I owe you an indemnity; fix it yourself and I will pass for payment any sum you may exact!" "A fig for your indemnity! Do you think I work only to earn indemnities?" "No, you work to earn author's rights." "When my pieces are played, not when they are forbidden." "However, you have a right to compensation." "The Court will fix that." "Trust in me and do not have recourse to law-suits." "Why?" "Because the same thing will happen to you that happened to Hugo with regard to the _Roi s'amuse_: the tribunal will declare itself incompetent." "The Government did not interfere with the contract of the _Roi s'amuse_, as you have in the case of _Antony._" "Indirectly." "The Court will appreciate that point." "This will not prevent you from writing a new piece for us." "Good! So that they may refuse you the budget of 1835? Thanks!" "You will think better of your determination." "I? I will never set foot in your offices again!" And out I went, sulking and growling; which I would certainly not have done had I known that, in less than two years' time, this same Thiers would break his word to Poland, by letting the Austrians, Prussians and Russians occupy Cracow; to Spain, by refusing to intervene; and to Switzerland by threatening to blockade her. What was this paltry little broken promise to a dramatic author in comparison with these three great events? I rushed to Dorval, whom the ministerial change of front hit more cruelly than it did me. Indeed, _Antony_ was only banned by the Théâtre-Français; elsewhere, its reputation was well established, and its revival could not add anything to mine. But it was different in the case of Dorval: she had never had a part in which she had been so successful as she had been in that of Adèle; none of her old rôles could supply the place of this one, and there was no probability that any new part would give her the chance of success, which the suppression of _Antony_ took away from her. She began by writing the following letter to the _Constitutionnel_:--