It was a fatiguing life we led: each day brought its emotions, either political or literary. _Antony_ went on its successful course in the midst of various disturbances. Every night, without any apparent motive whatsoever, a crowd gathered on the boulevard. The rallying-place varied between the Théâtre-Gymnase and that of the Ambigu. At first composed of five or six persons, it grew progressively; policemen would next appear and walk about with an aggressive air along the boulevard; the gutter urchins threw cabbage stumps or carrot ends at them, which was quite sufficient after half an hour or an hour's proceedings to cause a nice little row, which began at five o'clock in the afternoon and lasted till midnight. This daily popular irritation attracted many people to the boulevard and very few to the plays. _Antony_ was the only piece which defied the disturbances and the heat, and brought in sums of between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand francs. But there was such stagnation in business, and so great was the fear that spread over the book-trade, that the same publishers who had offered me six thousand francs for _Henri III._, and twelve thousand francs for _Christine_, hardly dared offer to print _Antony_ for half costs and half profits. I had it printed, not at half costs by a publisher, but entirely at my own expense. There was no way possible for me to remain in Paris any longer: riots swallowed up too much time and money. _Antony_ did not bring in enough to keep a man going; also, I was being goaded by the demon of poetry, which urged me to do something fresh. But how could one work in Paris, in the midst of gatherings at the _Grande-Chaumière_, dinners at the _Vendanges de Bourgogne_ and lawsuits at the Assize Courts? I conferred with Cavaignac and Bastide. I learnt that there would be nothing serious happening in Paris for six months or a year, and I obtained a holiday for three months. Only two causes kept me still in Paris: the first production of the _Maréchale d'Ancre_ and the début of Henry Monnier. De Vigny, who had not yet ventured anything at the theatre but his version of _Othello_, to which I referred in its right place, was about to make his real entry in the _Maréchale d'Ancre._ It was a fine subject; I had been on the point of treating it, but had renounced it because my good and learned friend Paul Lacroix, better known then under the name of the bibliophile Jacob, had begun a drama on the same subject.