The Salt Smugglers (6 page)

Changes of conviction sometimes have to be justified: men of the cloth or monarchs often cite the Bible or historical precedent in order to explain theirs. But the author of these lines finds himself, perhaps by sheer chance, in another situation altogether.

Whoever wrote the piece in the
Corsaire
accusing me of being a turncoat got his information wrong and moreover confused my name with someone else's. I am not the same M. Gérard who was a member of the secret Bureau of the Public Interest associated with the Ministry of the Interior. I have always kept my distance from party politics, although I do have to admit that I was acquainted with this particular homonym of mine: I suppose my name could have hurt him in his party affiliations, just as his seems to be affecting me today, — that is, if I indeed belonged to a political party.

I was never sent on any fact-finding mission by any ministry. Had I solicited or even accepted such a mission, I would not be embarrassed to admit it, for the money that is earmarked for these often very useful assignments is voted by our legislative bodies and does not therefore come directly from the head of state.

There are those who loudly protest that they would never sell themselves; — perhaps because no one would ever want to buy them.

For any writer who has achieved the kind of reputation that (even without great talent) one acquires by dint of hard work and study, there is sometimes merit in refusing to solicit funds from kings, even if these monies in the end belong to the nation at large. The problem is that one has been granted a favor; — whereas this should more appropriately be considered a right.

I have never engaged in politics, except for several articles I recently wrote as a foreign correspondent. The literary works that I have published over the years are characterized by a liberal point of view which predates the establishment of the Republic and which has not changed since. I believe that, unless he is possessed of very strong political beliefs concerning certain questions, it is a writer's job to remind those in power when they are acting like fools, — and to remind the public when it is being fooled.

In 1839, having just returned from Germany, I wrote a play for the Porte-Saint-Martin theater. Up to that point I had had no prior contact with any ministry. My play, which had been accepted for production by Harel, the director of the theater, had already been in rehearsal for a month when, as was the custom, we had to send two manuscript copies of it to the Office of the Censor. It cost six francs to make copies of five acts and a prologue. True, one of the two manuscripts would
be eventually returned, but what needs underscoring here is that writers are dunned far more for their work than other producers, — viz., copies of their books to be deposited at the national library, duplicate manuscripts to be submitted to the censor.

Forgive me, — I'm amusing myself while replying to
Le Corsaire
, — whom I must also thank for offering me one more excuse not to continue on my quest for the abbé de Bucquoy today. — As I was saying, writers are burdened by all sorts of hidden costs: when it comes to the publication of our works, our profession has to pay a kind of tax to the printers (called
les étoffes
and representing about a third of the labor costs) in order to offset the caution money required for their official licensing. Then we have to deal with the cost of theater licenses, which are often handed out to people who are well-meaning but completely ignorant of theater matters, — and who skim off funds meant for authors and actors. Finally we are hit up for the monies that go to pay the security bonds and stamp taxes that newspapers are required to pay, not to mention having to accommodate ourselves to newspaper directors or editors-in-chief who are totally illiterate. — This may be less the case these days, but still ...

So here I am, having to put up (like so many other writers) with all the indignities of this profession that is not strictly a profession, and dealing with the product of my own labors which, as Alphonse Karr has pointed out, has never even been recognized as actual
property
. Here I am, spending six months chasing after a piece of paper from the Ministry of the Interior that would allow my play to be performed. I had no choice but to make the rounds.

The ministry contained a number of career officials who were good-humored enough to be amused by sending a
non-serious
writer such as myself on a wild goose chase. M. Véron, whose acquaintance I had made in a restaurant, said to me one day: « You're going about things all wrong. I'll give you a personal letter over my signature for the censor »; and he handed me a sheet of paper that said: « I recommend to your attention this young author who has worked for us as a contributor to the
newspapers of our constitutional party of the opposition
and who is requesting a visa from the censor », etc. M. Véron, — an associate of this newspaper where I indeed did publish a few articles dealing with the great philosophers of the 18th century, — will surely not hold it against me if I make public his kind and honorable gesture.

From that day onward, all the doors were open for me: I was even informed of the reason that they wanted to delay my play and hence rob me of its profits for an entire winter season.

They considered my play to be dangerous especially because its fourth act featured a scene deemed too realistic and too concretely historical in its coloring because it depicted a “charcoal burning” after the fashion of the Italian
carbonari
. They had hoped I would heap ridicule upon these young conspirators and remained critical of the fact that I had presented things from the impartial point of view that I had learned from my study of Shakespeare and Goethe, — however weak my imitation of them may have been in the end.

My play, it should be pointed out, did not reach a favorable conclusion as to the advisability of political assassination, yet it demonstrated just how difficult it
might be for a man of feeling to support the reactionary politics of a small German court.

M. de Montalivet was the minister back then. I was unable to get access to him. And yet it was he who was responsible for all the decisions, — as I was informed by the various bureaucrats at the ministry (all of whom, it should be noted, treated me in the most polite and benevolent terms).

The rehearsals continued to be cancelled; — Bocage, who was engaged to perform in the provinces, quit the production, — which would have benefited tremendously from his talents and made a fortune for poor old Harel and me. The spring season, — not the best for theaters, — was creeping to a close. I mentioned my plight to a political journalist while visiting one of those newspaper offices where the line separating editorialists from feature writers is often forgotten in favor of simple comradeship based on years of acquaintance.

« You're wasting your time with all this. They're not enforcing censorship for the moment.

— I have good reason to believe the contrary.

— Censorship may exist in theory, but not in practice. Do you understand?

— Go on ...

— Three years ago, the minister managed to get a provisional vote from the assembly that reestablished censorship, but this vote came with the stipulation that a definitive law on this matter be presented for ratification within two years.

— And so?

— And so ... It's been three years now and nothing has been done. »

Though I am not
litigious
in nature, I nonetheless felt that I should defend my interests, — if not my personal interests (writers rarely think of these), at least those of my literary offspring.

I went to look up M. Lefèvre, the official (and
certified
) defense attorney for the association of dramatic authors. M. Lefèvre very politely said to me: « You may be entirely right ... But our association is careful to avoid anything that might smack of politics. Besides, my personal views would force me to recuse myself from this case. You will certainly find other lawyers only too happy to take it on. »

I went to look up M. Schayé who told me: « You're right. They don't have a leg to stand on. We'll send them a summons. »

The next day I received a letter granting me an audience with the Minister of the Interior ... at five that afternoon.

The minister received me on the run, saying, « I've not yet had time to read your manuscript; I'll take it with me to the country. Please drop back in to see me the day after tomorrow at the same time. »

I had to cool my heels to see the minister. I waited for a long time and it was quite late when I was finally ushered in. — But what would a dramatic author not do to save his play and extract it from the talons of a minister?

The minister received me with a gruff hello and shuffled through his papers in search of my manuscript. Never having had the privilege of seeing a minister up close, I examined M. Montalivet's handsome if somewhat overworked brow. — He belonged to that school of high functionaries of which our former king was quite fond, — one might call it the Party of the Portly. Left to his own devices, Louis-Philippe would have sacrificed
everything to these men whose physiques flattered his vision of the prosperity of the body politic. Like Caesar, who could not abide anybody thin, he was suspicious of nervous types such as M. Thiers or bilious temperaments such as M. Guizot. These were men who had been imposed upon him, — and who ended up costing him his reign ... deliberately or not. M. de Montalivet had fished out the enormous manuscript upon which my future as a playwright rested. He handed it back to me over his desk and, wisely eschewing those banal niceties so often inflicted upon writers, he said; « Here's your play back. Go ahead and have it performed. If it causes any problems, we'll just shut down the production. » I thanked him and took my leave.

If I had not been informed by a number of people that M. de Montalivet cut a most affable figure on the social scene, I would have sworn that I had just had an interview with the very M. de Pontchartrain who will make an appearance in my
Life of the abbé de Bucquoy
.

The problem now was how to get the play
back on its feet
after a number of its initial actors had quit the production. We had to wait for the closing of a play that was finishing up a successful run. It was now well into the summer season. Harel informed me that he had booked an elephant act for the following autumn so that my play would therefore only have a limited engagement.

We nonetheless managed to get it up and running with the best actors in the troupe: Mme Mélingue, Raucourt, Mélingue, Tournan, and good old Moessard. They were all full of kindness to me and turned in fine performances, even if my play was a bit eccentric for this sort of boulevard theater.

Meanwhile the rehearsals dragged on. A theater director is not in the best of financial health when expecting
an elephant
. Nor would the dog days of summer guarantee him the kind of box office success he might have expected had the play been scheduled for early winter. There was a new piece of scenery that was absolutely crucial to the production, — a backdrop representing ruins illuminated by the moon, at Eisenach, near the castle of Wartburg.

I had dreamed of this stage set, — having seen it in reality just the previous month upon leaving the electorate of Hesse-Cassel on my way to Leipzig.

Harel kept on reassuring me: « I've had the thing ordered from Cicéri. We'll set it up when we go into our dress rehearsals. »

It was finally set up the day before the show opened.

The set represented a subterranean hall surmounted by statues of knights, similar to the one they used to play
The Secret Tribunal
at the Amibigu.

In fact it might well have been the very same set, merely repainted.

I had gotten it into my head that my play should include a number of songs with lyrics by Koerner and set to music by Weber. — I had heard these firsthand during my travels and had sung them to myself while crossing the Black Forest on foot in the company of German students and journeymen. The song entitled the
Lutzow Hunt
had originally been directed against France; but in my translation it lost its nationalist character and simply became the chant of a people fighting for its independence against the foreigner. The song entitled
The Sword
turned into something on the order of:

I had contacted August Morel to see whether he couldn't arrange the music for these songs. He agreed to come up with a score suitable for theatrical performance, but for which we would need a chorus of sixteen.

We thought of the singers who worked with Mainzer or those at the Orphéon. I went to visit the choirmasters in their studios and in their impoverished mansards and they generously offered to help me, asking only to be paid the price of the days' work they would lose by coming to our rehearsals. — In the end, they lost a whole month.

Harel, who was having difficulties finding the money to pay for extras, reduced the cast to the bare minimum; the stagehands found themselves having to fill in during the crowd scenes. Since they were playing students who did little but mill around, it was no great sweat off their brow. Still, their inexperience often threatened to spoil the effect of the scene.

Everybody was wild about two of the popular songs, — which subsequently entered into the repertoire of various workers' glee clubs.

On the eve of the first performance I was quite nervous about the props which, — like chef Vatel's famous fish course, — were nowhere in sight ...