They listened, without letting a syllable of the magic prose escape their ears, and they dreamed while listening; they forgot "the omnipotence of inferior minds;" they deified each other, they ascended, supple and light, the mystic steps, summoned now by the illusion of a very pure and very expanding air at the summit of a narrow mountain above the clouds. Indeed, they had, "agitated minds," as the male character of the piece had so well said; they said to the whole world: "Your joys are not my joys;" all that stirred outside of them, all things that agitated below their flight were quite truly "infantile and noxious," in the silence they were in rapport with their "old friend"; they cried aloud to life: "It is no longer a question of all this! Adieu!..."
And at the end, when they went down with the curtain's fall to the stupefied room, the same stifled cry issued from their mouths, the cry of Hamlet:
Entragues, swept away by a movement of anger, so little in accord with his usual character, thus challenged a man who was hissing:
As the rascal contented himself with shrugging his shoulders, in this way taking his key away, Entragues felt sadness and shame welling within him in place of anger.
"We will protest," said Sixtine, "by foregoing the rest of the play."
It was nine o'clock. Some persons, having been spared the rise of the curtain, were strolling under the Odéon galleries, looking at the latest novels: Hubert recognized several eminent critics and thought he could read, underneath the ribbon of their hats, the repetition of the naive avowal Collé made in his _Journal_: "I undertake to criticize plays because I cannot write any myself." They spoke of the revival of the little _machine_, and one of them deemed, in a simple and new style, that "the need of it did not perhaps make itself very acutely perceived." This irony was relished.
The weather was humid, but mild. They walked through little dark streets, grazed by occasional passersby, in silence.
She asked him if he personally knew the author of this piece so unlike the things ordinarily heard at the theater.
"He is dead," said Hubert. "He was the noblest writer of our time."
Half of the young writers recognized him as their master and almost all had been touched by his influence. In his works were pages of an incomparable magnificence and purity of language. He truly gave the impression of the two souls of Goethe and Edgar Allen Poe melted into one and lodged in the same person.