A question of mine on Sardou's manner of working led to our abandoning the gardens and mounting to the top floor of the chateau, where his enormous library and collection of prints are stored in a series of little rooms or alcoves, lighted from the top and opening on a corridor which runs the length of the building. In each room stands a writing-table and a chair; around the walls from floor to ceiling and in huge portfolios are arranged his books and engravings according to their subject. The Empire alcove, for instance, contains nothing but publications and pictures relating to that epoch.
Roman and Greek history have their alcoves, as have mediaeval history and the reigns of the different Louis. Nothing could well be conceived more conducive to study than this arrangement, and it makes one realize how honest was the master's reply when asked what was his favorite amusement.
"Work!" answered the author.
Our conversation, as was fated, soon turned to the enormous success of ROBESPIERRE in London - a triumph that even Sardou's many brilliant victories had not yet equalled.
It is characteristic of the French disposition that neither the author nor any member of his family could summon courage to undertake the prodigious journey from Paris to London in order to see the first performance. Even Sardou's business agent, M. Roget, did not get further than Calais, where his courage gave out. "The sea was so terrible!" Both those gentlemen, however, took it quite as a matter of course that Sardou's American agent should make a three-thousand-mile journey to be present at the first night.
The fact that the French author resisted Sir Henry Irving's pressing invitations to visit him in no way indicates a lack of interest in the success of the play. I had just arrived from London, and so had to go into every detail of the performance, a rather delicate task, as I had been discouraged with the acting of both Miss Terry and Irving, who have neither of them the age, voice, nor temperament to represent either the revolutionary tyrant or the woman he betrayed. As the staging had been excellent, I enlarged on that side of the subject, but when pressed into a corner by the author, had to acknowledge that in the scene where Robespierre, alone at midnight in the Conciergerie, sees the phantoms of his victims advance from the surrounding shadows and form a menacing circle around him, Irving had used his poor voice with so little skill that there was little left for the splendid climax, when, in trying to escape from his ghastly visitors, Robespierre finds himself face to face with Marie Antoinette, and with a wild cry, half of horror, half of remorse, falls back insensible.
In spite of previous good resolutions, I must have given the author the impression that Sir Henry spoke too loud at the beginning of this scene and was in consequence inadequate at the end.
"What!" cried Sardou. "He raised his voice in that act! Why, it's a scene to be played with the soft pedal down! This is the way it should be done!" Dropping into a chair in the middle of the room my host began miming the gestures and expression of Robespierre as the phantoms (which, after all, are but the figments of an over-wrought brain) gather around him. Gradually he slipped to the floor, hiding his face with his upraised elbow, whispering and sobbing, but never raising his voice until, staggering toward the portal to escape, he meets the Queen face to face. Then the whole force of his voice came out in one awful cry that fairly froze the blood in my veins!
"What a teacher you would make!" instinctively rose to my lips as he ended.
With a careless laugh, Sardou resumed his shabby velvet cap, which had fallen to the floor, and answered: "Oh, it's nothing! I only wanted to prove to you that the scene was not a fatiguing one for the voice if played properly. I'm no actor and could not teach, but any one ought to know enough not to shout in that scene!"
This with some bitterness, as news had arrived that Irving's voice had given out the night before, and he had been replaced by his half-baked son in the title role, a change hardly calculated to increase either the box-office receipts or the success of the new drama.
Certain ominous shadows which, like Robespierre's visions, had been for some time gathering in the corners of the room warned me that the hour had come for my trip back to Paris.
Declining reluctantly an invitation to take potluck with my host, I was soon in the Avenue of the Sphinx again. As we strolled along, talking of the past and its charm, a couple of men passed us, carrying a piece of furniture rolled in burlaps.
"Another acquisition?" I asked. "What epoch has tempted you this time?"
"I'm sorry you won't stop and inspect it," answered Sardou with a twinkle in his eye. "It's something I bought yesterday for my bedroom. An armchair! Pure Loubet!"
