e de Girardin's "La Joie fait peur,"[27] there is a
scene which, as played by Regnier and Delaunay, looked to the spectator
absolutely spontaneous. The smallest detail had been minutely regulated.
It is where the old retainer, while dusting the room, is talking to
himself about his young master, Lieutenant Adrien Desaubiers, who is
reported dead.

[Footnote 27: There are several English versions of the play,
and I am under the impression that the late Tom Robertson was
inspired by it when he adapted "Caste." I allude to that scene
in the third act, where George d'Alroy returns unexpectedly and
where Polly Eccles breaks the news to her sister.--EDITOR.]

"I can see him now," says Noel, who cannot resign himself to the idea;
"I can see him now, as he used to come in from his long walks, tired,
starving, and shouting before he was fairly into the house. 'Here I am,
my good Noel; I am dying with hunger. Quick! an omelette.'" At that
moment the young lieutenant enters the room, and having heard Noel's
last sentence, repeats it word for word.

Short as was the sentence, it had been arranged that Delaunay should
virtually cut it into four parts.

At the words, "_It is I_," Regnier shivered from head to foot; at "_Here
I am, my good Noel_," he lifted his eyes heavenwards, to make sure that
the voice did not come from there, and that he was not labouring under a
kind of hallucination; at the words, "_I am dying with hunger_," he came
to the conclusion that it was a real human voice after all; and at the
final, "_Quick! an omelette_," he turned round quickly, and fell like a
log into the young fellow's arms.

I repeat, the whole of the scene had been timed to the fraction of a
second; nevertheless, on the first night, Regnier, nervous as all great
actors are on such occasions, forgot all about his own arrangements,
and, at the first sound of Delaunay's voice, was so overcome with
emotion that he literally tumbled against the latter, who of course was
not prepared to bear him up, and had all his work to do to keep himself
from falling also. Meanwhile Regnier lay stretched at full length on the
stage, and the house broke into tumultuous applause.

"That was magnificent," said Delaunay after the performance. "Suppose we
repeat the thing to-morrow?"

But Regnier would not hear of it; he stuck to his original conception in
four tempi. He preferred trusting to his art rather than to t