Meanwhile Madame Sarah Bernhardt had taken the play back to Paris with her, promising to produce it at her own theatre of the Porte St Martin at the very first opportunity, a promise that was never fulfilled. Moreover, when a couple of years later Wilde, then a prisoner awaiting his trial, finding himself penniless, sent a friend to her to explain how he was circumstanced, and offering to sell her the play outright for a comparatively small sum of money in order that he might be able to pay for his defence, this incomparable _poseuse_ was profuse in her expressions of sympathy and admiration for _ce grand artiste_ and promised to assist him to the best of her ability. She had the cruelty to delude with false hopes a man suffering a mental martyrdom, and after buoying him up from day to day with promises of financial assistance, the Jewess not considering the investment a remunerative one, shut the door to his emissary, and failed to keep her word. Now that the foreign royalties on play and opera amount to a considerable sum annually her Hebrew heart must be consumed with rage at having missed such "a good thing." The piece was first produced at the Théâtre Libre in Paris in 1896 by Monsieur Luigne Poë with Lina Muntz as Salomé. The news of the production reached Wilde in his prison cell at Reading, and in a letter to a friend the following reference to it occurs:-- "Please say how gratified I was at the performance of my play, and have my thanks conveyed to Luigne Poë. It is something that at a time of disgrace and shame I should still be regarded as an artist. I wish I could feel more pleasure, but I seem dead to all emotions except those of anguish and despair. However, please let Luigne Poë know I am sensible of the honour he has done me. He is a poet himself. Write to me in answer to this, and try and see what Lemaitre, Bauer, and Sarcey said of 'Salomé.'" There is something intensely pathetic in the picture of Convict 33 writing to know what the foremost critics of the most artistic city in Europe have to say concerning the child of his brain. The play was eventually privately produced in English by the New Stage Club in May 1905 at the Bijou Theatre, Archer Street. The following is the programme on that occasion:-- THE NEW STAGE CLUB "SALOMÉ" BY OSCAR WILDE AT THE BIJOU THEATRE, Archer Street, W. May 10th and May 13th 1905 Characters of the drama in the order of their speaking: