A hiss, a miserable hiss, in her presence, and because of her! A hiss of scorn which she attributes to herself--through my mistake, be it understood! Alas! my friends, for an instant, I felt an impulse to show myself truly great, immortal, upon the stage of your theatre. Instead of replying to the insult by another, which brought upon me the assault from which I still suffer, instead of provoking a vulgar audience to rush upon the scene and cowardly beat and belabour me, I held for a moment a sublime purpose, worthy of Caesar himself, a purpose which none could hesitate to pronounce in harmony with the dramatic conceptions of the great Racine himself! I thought to set fire to the theatre, and while the audience perished in the flames, bear away Aurélie in my arms, her disheveled tresses streaming over her disordered dress. O remorse that fills my feverish nights and days of agony! What! I might have done this and I refrained! What! Do ye still insult me, ye, who owe your lives to pity, rather than any fear on my part? I might have burned them all! Judge for yourselves: the theatre of P---- has but one exit; ours opened upon a little street in the rear, but the green-room, where you were all assembled, is on the other side of the stage. In order to set fire to the curtain, I had only to snatch down one of the lamps; I ran no risk of detection, for the manager could not see me and I was alone listening to the insipid dialogue between Britannicus and Junia, waiting for my cue to reappear; all through that scene I was struggling with myself, and when I entered upon the stage I was turning and twisting in my fingers a glove that I had picked up; I expected to avenge myself more nobly than Caesar himself of an insult that I had felt with all the heart of a Caesar.... Ah, well! the cowards dared not begin again; my glance confounded them, and I was on the point of pardoning the audience, if not Junia herself, when she dared.... Immortal gods!... Hold, let me speak my mind! ... Yes, since that night, it is my delusion to imagine myself a Roman, an emperor; I have identified myself with my part, and the tunic of Nero clings to my burning limbs as that of the centaur to the dying Hercules. Let us jest no more with sacred things, not even those of an age and nation long since past, lest perchance some tongue of flame yet quiver in the ashes of the gods of Rome!...