I returned home, I vow it, without a single feeling of regret. It was, however, the first performance of a play which was to hold the bills for nearly eight hundred times! Next day, several of my friends, who knew the part I had taken in _La Tour de Nesle,_ came to pay me their compliments. Amongst these was one of my best friends, Pierre Collin. "Do you know what Harel has done?" he said to me as he was coming in. "What has he done?" "What he has put on the bills?" "No." "Instead of proceeding as in mathematics, from the known to the unknown, he has proceeded from the unknown to the known." "I do not understand." "Instead of putting: 'MM. Gaillardet et ***,' he has put et 'MM. *** et Gaillardet.'" "Oh, the rascal!" I exclaimed, "he will cause me a fresh quarrel with M. Gaillardet; and, what is worse, this time M. Gaillardet will be in the right." I took up my hat and walking-stick. "Where are you going?" "I am going to Harel. Will you come with me?" "I must go to my office." "Then, quick, call a carriage! I will drop you there in passing." I was at Harel's five minutes later. "Ah! there you are!" he said to me; "you have learnt the trick I have played off on Gaillardet?" "It is because I have learnt of it that I have hurried here.... It is very wrong of you, my dear friend!" "Really! Why? Was it not agreed that the asterisks should precede M. Gaillardet's name? It is your right: you are four years his senior in theatrical matters." "But it is the custom for asterisks to follow a name." "Custom is a fool, my dear; we will either change it or put some sense into it; we both have enough and to spare when the devil takes us!" "Say you have quite enough by yourself." "Ah! You would betray me? You would go against me?" "Oh no, I remain neutral; only, if M. Gaillardet calls on me as a witness, I shall be obliged to tell the truth." "My dear fellow, we have a great success already; with a touch of scandal we shall have a tremendous success.... If M. Gaillardet objects, our scandal is to hand. He will then have done something for the play at any rate." "Harel!" "Oh! you are really delightful! You think it is enough to make masterpieces and to say, 'I did not do them.' Very well, whether it suits you or not, all Paris shall know that you did." "Go to the devil! I wish I had never touched your cursed play.... Listen, some one is ringing your bell; I bet it is M. Gaillardet." Harel opened his door and listened a moment. "Who is it?" he asked. "I do not know, sir," the servant answered; "it is a man carrying a stamped paper." "A stamped paper?... This is something of a novelty! Show him in." The man was a sheriff's officer who came on behalf of M. Gaillardet, and who, like Haman for Mardocheus, served as a _herald to his fame._ The stamped document was a summons before the Tribunal of Commerce, seeking to force M. Harel to remove the unlucky asterisks.