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.
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