which had been heard only in secret session, soon got about Paris, and
excited intense curiosity and impatience; one of the daily papers
published a scene from _Lucrece_; the sale was immense; everybody
praised it to the skies, even members of the Academy. The next day the
hoax came out: a clever but third-rate writer, M. Mery, had made April
fools of the wits of Paris. The piece itself was soon performed, and
made what is called in this country an immense sensation: the theatre,
long out of favor, was crowded every night; the papers were full of it
every morning; it was the topic about which everybody talked. Authors
who had lately written less popular plays were somewhat envious and
spiteful; Victor Hugo pronounced _Lucrece_ to be Livy versified; Dumas
repeated (or invented) the speech of an enthusiastic notary, who
exclaimed, "What a piece! Not one of my clerks could have written it."
Madame de Girardin had just brought out her tragedy of _Judith_ at the
Theatre Francais, with the powerful support of Rachel in the principal
character: the drama, when read by Rachel and Madame de Girardin (whose
beauty, wit and social position gave her during her whole life a
fictitious rank in a certain set, of which none were better aware than
the members of it) in Madame Recamier's drawing-room, had produced a
better effect than it did upon the stage, where it was considered a
respectable failure. Madame de Girardin could not control or conceal her
chagrin, and meeting M. Ponsard one evening at the Duchesse de
Grammont's, declined to have him presented to her. He took his honors so
quietly--so tamely in the opinion of some people--that Madame Dorval
exhorted him: "Wake up! wake up! you look like a hen that has hatched an
eagle's egg." Since the Augustan age of French literature, since
Corneille and Racine, a really fine tragedy on a classic subject had
been unknown, and the romantic reaction was then at its height. The
moral view of _Lucrece_ was a new and important element of success. "The
religious feeling of the Roman matron, the inviolability of the domestic
hearth, are these not new? do not they count for much?" observed the
virtuous philosopher Ballanche, the devoted, unselfish friend of Madame
Recamier. Sainte-Beuve was greatly impressed by the nobility of the
characters and treatment, and after pointing out its beauties and
shortcomings, set the seal to his encomium by affirming that the secret
of the power of _Lucrece_ was