Note 11 — Chapter IV

"'You have written Struensee!' he says to me. Does M. Dumas think to prove by that that I have done nothing in La Tour de Nesle? He forgets, then, that he, too, has written also La Chasse et l'Amour, La Noce et l'Enterrement? (who has heard these plays mentioned?) Then the wretched Napoléon, which has had two Waterloos, dragging with it in its second the downfall of the Odéon and of M. Harel! then, immediately after La Tour de Nesle, Le Fils de l'Émigré, which had three performances with M. Anicet; Angèle, which had thirty with M. Anicet; La Vénitienne, which had twenty with M. Anicet; Catherine Howard, which has had fifteen without M. Anicet? Are we really to suppose that M. Dumas is not therefore the author of the beauties of Antony, of Henri III., and of Christine? It has surely been said so here and there, and even partly proved! Perhaps it is to this that I owe M. Dumas's attack? But he need not be anxious: I shall never write a Gaule et France and certainly not a Madame et la Vendée.