But, in the meantime, as I have said, _Napoléon_ was to be acted on the following day, a literary event that was little calculated to restore me to the king's political good books. This time, the poor duc d'Orléans did _not_ come and ask me to intercede with his father to be allowed to go to the Odéon. _Napoléon_ was a success, but only from pure chance: its literary value was pretty nearly nil. The rôle of the spy was the only real original creation; all the rest was done with paste and scissors. There was some hissing amongst the applause, and (a rare thing with an author) I was almost of the opinion of those who hissed. But the expenses, with Frédérick playing the principal part, and Lockroy and Stockleit the secondary ones; with costumes and decorations and the burning of the Kremlin, and the retreat of Bérésina, and especially the passion of five years at Saint Helena, amounting to a hundred thousand francs; how could it, with all this, have been anything but a success? Delaistre acted the part of Hudson Lowe. I remember they were obliged to send the theatre attendants back with him each night to keep him from being stoned on his way home. The honours of the first night belonged by right to Frédérick far more than to me. Frédérick had just begun to make his fine and great reputation, a reputation conscientiously earned and well deserved. He had made his first appearances at the Cirque; then, as we have stated, he came to act at the Odéon, in the part of one of the brothers in _Les Macchabées_, by M. Guiraud; he next returned to the Ambigu, where he created the parts of Cartouche and of Cardillac, and, subsequently, he went to the Porte-Saint-Martin, where his name had become famous by his Méphistophélès, Marat and Le Joueur. He was a privileged actor, after the style of Kean, full of defects, but as full, also, of fine qualities; he was a genius in parts requiring violence, strength, anger, sarcasm, caprice or buffoonery. At the same time, in summing up the gifts of this eminent actor, it is useless to expect of him attributes that Bocage possessed in such characters as the man _Antony_, and in _La Tour de Nesle._ Bocage and Frédérick combined gave us the qualities that Talma, in his prime, gave us by himself. Frédérick finally returned to the Odéon, where he played le Duresnel in _La Mère et la Fille_ most wonderfully; and where he next played _Napoléon._ But Frédérick's great dramatic talents do not stand out most conspicuously in the part of _Napoléon._ To speak of him adequately, we must dwell upon his _Richard Darlington_, _Lucrèce Borgia, Kean_ and _Buy Bias._ In this manner did I stride across the invisible abyss that divided one year from another, and passed from the year 1830 to that of 1831, which brought me insensibly to my twenty-ninth year. BOOK II CHAPTER I