And then came another enthusiast--they are useful in the world, these enthusiasts--who took up the work at the point where Caristie had laid it down. This was the young editor of the _Revue Meridionale_, Fernand Michel--more widely known by his pseudonym of "Antony Real." By a lucky calamity--the great inundation of the Rhone in the year 1840--Michel was detained for a while in Orange: and so was enabled to give to the theatre more than the ordinary tourist's passing glance. By that time, the interior of the building had been cleared and its noble proportions fully were revealed; and as the result of his first long morning's visit he became, as Caristie had become before him, fairly infatuated with it. For my part, I am disposed to believe that a bit of Roman enchantment still lingers in those ancient walls; that the old gods who presided over their creation--and who continue to live on very comfortably, though a little shyly and in a quiet way, here in the south of France--have still an alluring power over those of us who, being at odds with existing dispensations, are open to their genial influences. But without discussing this side issue, it is enough to say that Michel--lightly taking up what proved to be the resolute work of half a lifetime--then and there vowed himself to the task of restoring and reanimating that ruined and long-silent stage. For more than twenty years he laboured without arriving at any tangible result; and the third decade of his propaganda almost was ended when at last, in August, 1869, his dream was made a reality and the spell of silence was broken by the presentation of Mehul's "Joseph" at Orange. And the crowning of his happiness came when, the opera ended, his own ode composed for the occasion, "Les Triomphateurs"--set to music by Imbert--echoed in the ancient theatre, and the audience of more than seven thousand burst into enthusiastic cheering over the victory that he had won. Truly, to be the hero of such a triumph was worth the work of nine-and-twenty years.