his; what men hear, and do not understand, is
always tedious; and it was recited in so shocking a tone by the actress,
who, not having entirely recovered from a fit of illness, was flurried
by the tumult of the audience. She declaimed in a twanging tone like
psalm-singing; so that the audience could not hear, among the fatiguing
discordances (he means their own hissing), nor separate the thoughts and
words from the full chant which accompanied them. They objected
perpetually to the use of the word _Madame_ between two female rivals,
as too comic; one of the pit, when an actress said _Madame_, cried out
'Say _Princesse!_' This disconcerted the actress. They also objected to
the words _apropos_ and _mal-apropos_. Yet, after all, how are there too
many _Madames_ in the piece, since they do not amount to forty-six in
the course of forty-four scenes? Of these, however, I have erased half."

This historian of his own wrong-headedness proceeds, with all the
simplicity of this narrative, to describe the hubbub.

"Thus it was impossible to connect what they were hearing with what they
had heard. In the short intervals of silence, the actors, who, during
the tumult, forgot their characters, tried with difficulty to recover
their conception. The conspirators were prepared to a man; not only in
their head, but some with written notes had their watchwords, to set
their party a-going. They seemed to act with the most extraordinary
concert; they seemed to know the exact moment when they were to give the
word, and drown, in their hurly-burly, the voice of the actor, who had a
passionate part to declaim, and thus break the connexion between the
speakers. All this produced so complete an effect, that it seemed as if
the actors themselves had been of the conspiracy, so wilful and so
active was the execution of the plot. It was particularly during the
fifth and sixth acts that the cabal was most outrageous; they knew these
were the most beautiful, and deserved particular attention. Such a
humming arose, that the actors seemed to have had their heads turned;
some lost their voice, some declaimed at random, the prompter in vain
cried out, nothing was heard, and everything was said; the actor, who
could not hear the catch-word, remained disconcerted and silent; the
whole was broken, wrong and right; it was all Hebrew. Nor was this all;
the actors behind the scene were terrified, and they either came
forwards trembling, and only watching the s