In order that you may understand the importance of the adventure I am about relating to you, it will be necessary for me to picture the state of mind which I was in at the time it happened; this will be a sort of philosophical and psychological preamble." "Thunder!" interrupted Marillac, "if I had known that, I would have ordered a second bowl." "You will remember," continued Gerfaut, paying no attention to this pleasantry, "the rather bad attack of spleen which I had a little over a year ago ?" "Before your trip to Switzerland ?" "Exactly." "If I remember right," said the artist, "you were strangely cross and whimsical at the time.

Was it not just after the failure of our drama at the Porte Saint-Martin ?" "You might also add of our play at the Gymnase." "I wash my hands of that.

You know very well that it only went as far as the second act, and I did not write one word in the first." "And hardly one in the second.

However, I take the catastrophe upon my shoulders; that made two perfect failures in that d----d month of August." "Two failures that were hard to swallow," replied Marillac, "We can say, for our consolation, that there never were more infamous conspiracies against us, above all, than at the Gymnase.

My ears ring with the hisses yet! I could see, from our box, a little villain in a dress coat, in one corner of the pit, who gave the signal with a whistle as large as a horse-pistol.