among the Revolutionary leaders, and gave them _bouillon_ in the
kitchen, when he came home from the theatre at night. In 1795 he sold
the villa to Josephine de Beauharnais, and he always said that her
first payment was made to him from moneys sent to her, by her husband,
from Italy. It is not known whether Talma owned, or leased, an
apartment in No. 15 Quai Voltaire, where he lived from 1802 until
1806. The house, now No. 17, one of the ancient stately structures
facing the quay, is somewhat narrower than its neighbors. During the
ten years between 1807 and 1817 he had an apartment at No. 6 Rue de
Seine; possibly in that pavilion in the court which was built by
Marguerite de Valois for her residence, and which has been heightened
by having two new floors slipped between the lower and top stories,
leaving these latter and the façade much as she built them. His home,
from 1818 to 1821, at No. 14 Rue de Rivoli, is replaced by the new
structures at the western end of that street, which is entirely
renumbered. After two more changes on the northern bank, he finally
settled at No. 9 Rue de la Tour-des-Dames. Until 1822 there was still
to be seen the tower of the windmill owned by the "_Dames de
Montmartre_," which gave its name to this street. At its number 3, a
small _hôtel_, circular-fronted and most coquettish, lived Mlle. Mars,
it is believed, and here she was the victim of the earliest recorded
theft of an actress's jewels. The simple and stately house, of a low
curtain between two wings, with two stories and a mansard roof,
bearing the number 9, is the scene of Talma's last years and of his
death, on October 19, 1826. His final appearance had been on June 11th
of that year, in his marvellous personation of Charles VI. At this
house we shall see Dumas visit the old actor, who had seen Voltaire!
Dumas says that Talma spared nothing in his aim at accuracy, historic
and archæologic, when creating a new rôle or mounting a new play.
Indeed, we know that Talma was the first great realist in costume and
scenery, as we know that he first brought the statues of tragedy down
to human proportions and gave them life-blood. Dumas dwells especially
on the voice of the great tragedian--a voice that was glorious and
sincere, and in anguish was a sob.
There is a glowing portrait of Talma from the pen of Chateaubriand, in
which he makes plain that the tragedian, while he was, himself, his
century and ancient centuries in one, had been profoundly affected by
the terrible scenes of the Terror which he had witnessed; and it was
that baleful inspiration that sent the concentrated passion of
patriotism leaping in torrents from his heart. "His grace--not an
ordinary grace--seized one like fate. Black ambition, remorse,
jealousy, sadness of soul, bodily agony, human grief, the madness sent
by the gods and by adversity--_that_ was what he knew. Just his coming
on the scene, just the sound of his voice, were overpoweringly tragic.
Suffering and contemplation mingled on his brow, breathed in his
postures, his gestures, his walk, his motionlessness."
Thomas Carlyle seems strangely placed in the stalls of the Théâtre
Français, yet he sat there, at the end of his twelve-days' visit to
Paris in 1825. "On the night before leaving," he writes, "I found that
I ought to visit one theatre, and by happy accident came upon Talma
playing there. A heavy, shortish, numb-footed man, face like a
warming-pan for size, and with a strange, most ponderous, yet delicate
expression in the big, dull-glowing black eyes and it. Incomparably
the best actor I ever saw. Play was 'Oedipe'; place the Théâtre
Français."
[Illustration: Monogram from former entrance of the Cour du Commerce,
believed to be the initials of the owner, one Girardot.]