And the number of 'frosts' I've seen! How often the play has fallen under me like an old hack, and has chucked me into the gutter! Ah, if one were punished only for one's own sins!" "My dear Romilly," replied Meunier sharply, "do you imagine that the fate of dramatic authors like myself does not depend as much upon the actors as upon ourselves?
Do you think it never happens that actors, by their carelessness or clumsiness, ruin a work which was meant to reach the heights?
And do not we also, like Caesar's legionary, become seized with dismay and anguish at the thought that our fate is not assured by our own valour, but that it depends on those who fight beside us ?" "Such is life," observed Constantin Marc.

"In every undertaking, everywhere and always, we pay for the faults of others." "That is only too true," resumed Meunier, who had just seen his lyric drama, _Pandolphe et Clarimonde_, come hopelessly to grief.

"But the iniquity of it disgusts us." "It should not disgust us in the least," replied Constantin Marc.

"There is a sacred law which governs the world, which we are forced to obey, which we are proud to worship.

It is injustice, holy injustice, august injustice.