Victor Hugo had originally intended to call his play _Three to One_; which to the modern mind would have suggested a sporting drama. _Castilian Honour_--excellent title!--had also been suggested; but the general opinion of Victor Hugo's friends was in favour of _Hernani_, the musical and sonorous name of the hero; and under that title the piece was produced. It has been said that the supporters of Victor Hugo took possession of a certain portion of the theatre as early as two in the afternoon. They had brought with them hams, tongues, and bottles of wine; and they had what the Americans call a "good time" during the interval that passed before the public was admitted--eating, drinking, singing songs, and discussing the beauties of the piece they had come to applaud. "As soon as the doors of the theatre were opened the band of romanticists," says Théophile Gautier, "turned their eyes towards the incomers, and if among them a pretty woman appeared her arrival was greeted with a burst of applause. These marks of approbation were not bestowed on rich toilettes and dazzling jewellery, they were reserved for beauty in its simplest manifestations. Thus no one was received with so much enthusiasm as Mdlle. Delphine Gay, afterwards Mme. de Girardin, who, in a white muslin dress relieved by a blue scarf, wore no ornaments whatever. Mdlle. Gay assured the Duke de Montmorency the morning after the representation, that she had not spent on her dress more than twenty-eight francs." [Illustration: CORNEILLE. (_From the bust in the Comédie Française_)] The Hugoites did not form a compact body, but occupied different parts of the pit and stalls in groups. They are said to have been easily recognisable by their sometimes picturesque, sometimes grotesque costumes, and by their defiant air. The combatants on either side applauded and counter-applauded, cried "Bravo!" and hissed without much reference to the merits of the piece, and often in attack or defence of supposed words which the piece did not contain. Thus (to quote once more from Théophile Gautier) in the scene where Ruy Gomez, on the point of marrying Doña Sol, entrusts her to Don Carlos, Hernani exclaims to the former, "_Vieillard stupide! il l'aime_." M. Parseval de Grandmaison, a rigid classicist, but rather hard of hearing, thought Hernani had said, "_Vieil as de pique! il l'aime_." "This is too much," groaned M. Parseval de Grandmaison. "What do you say?" replied Lassailly, who was sitting next him in the stalls, and who had only heard his neighbour's interruption. "I say, sir, that it is not permissible to call a venerable old man like Ruy Gomez de Silva 'old ace of spades.'" "He has a perfect right to do so," replied Lassailly. "Cards were invented under Charles VI. Bravo for _'Vieil as de pique!' Bravo, Hugo!_"