I enclose a short note for each of the little boys. Give Harry ten shillings pocket-money, and Plorn six.
The Olliffe girls, very nice. Florence at the readings, prodigiously excited.
From my hurried note to Mamie, you will get some faint general idea of a new star's having arisen in Paris. But of its brightness you can have no adequate conception.
[John has locked me up and gone out, and the little bell at the door is ringing demoniacally while I write.]
You have never heard me read yet. I have been twice goaded and lifted out of myself into a state that astonished _me_ almost as much as the audience. I have a cold, but no neuralgia, and am "as well as can be expected."
I forgot to tell Mamie that I went (with Lady Molesworth) to hear "Faust" last night. It is a splendid work, in which that noble and sad story is most nobly and sadly rendered, and perfectly delighted me. But I think it requires too much of the audience to do for a London opera house. The composer must be a very remarkable man indeed. Some management of light throughout the story is also very poetical and fine. We had Carvalho's box. I could hardly bear the thing, it affected me so.
But, as a certain Frenchman said, "No weakness, Danton!" So I leave off.
A thousand congratulations on your great success! Never mind what they say, or do, _pour vous écraser_; you have the game in your hands. The romantic drama, thoroughly well done (with a touch of Shakespeare now and then), is the speciality of your theatre. Give the public the picturesque, romantic drama, with yourself in it; and (as I told you in the beginning) you may throw down your gauntlet in defiance of all comers.
It is a most brilliant success indeed, and it thoroughly rejoices my heart!
Unfortunately I cannot now hope to see "Maquet," because I am packing up and going out to dinner (it is late in the afternoon), and I leave to-morrow morning when all sensible people, except myself, are in bed; and I do not come back to Paris or near it. I had hoped to see him at breakfast last Monday, but he was not there. Paul Féval was there, and I found him a capital fellow. If I can do anything to help you on with "Maquet"[8] when I come back I will most gladly do it.