The news that something unusual in the way of acting was likely to occur had spread with the rapidity of a fire. Be it said that most of his fellow-players were heartily sympathetic with Eliphalet for the failure they were confident he would make, but their sympathy did not take the form of staying away. Before the curtain rose, each member of the company came forward to wish him luck, and he, with old-world courtesy, thanked them all and waited, apparently unmoved, for his cue. The first scene in which he was to appear was a very Rabelaisian interlude wherein he made love, of a base kind, to his model. At rehearsals he had been worse in this than in any other part of the play. His efforts to acquire a light touch had been little short of bricklayer’s pastry, and the poor girl with whom the scene took place was in an agony of dread at the coming ordeal. What was her amazement, then, when Eliphalet Cardomay acted the whole racy interlude as though he were reading a lesson from the Bible. At first the audience did not know what to make of it, the reading was so utterly at variance with the lines. Then, like a wave, it struck them that here was originality at its highest. Here in these full-throated accents, these absurd parsonic gestures, was a brilliant satirical reading—a fragment of exquisite characterisation. There was an ovation when Eliphalet left the stage. In the author’s box Sir Owen Frazer was heard to say, with extraordinary force, considering he had lost his voice, “I’m damned! Damn it!” Oscar Raven plucked Wakefield by the sleeve. “What on earth do you make of it?” he said. “It will make the play,” came the reply. “But I can’t understand. Does he know what he’s doing?” “’Course not. Our friend Eliphalet is shirking. He couldn’t do what we wanted, so he’s just turning on the old stuff, the old provincial tap.” “Then please Heaven,” came from Franks, “he keeps up the flow till the end.” And he did. All the bad provincial fake was reeled off—mere vocalisation and attitudinising, utterly misplaced, fitting the part nowhere, and for that very reason accepted by the high-browed Press and the novelty-seeking public as one of the finest dramatic conceptions of the day. The Press raved about it. They went into ecstasies over the Art of Eliphalet and his “epic cynicism.” “Why had this marvellous depictor been denied to London?” they cried. “Doubtless,” said one, “much praise is due to the intellect of Mr. Wakefield, the brilliant producer, but for the actor himself no adulation could be too strong.” And the “brilliant young producer” kicked himself heartily in that the praise should have been due to him for casting Eliphalet as Cellini, but that he had forfeited all claim thereunto by losing sight of his original intention out of pique.