Content to wait till a more complaisant director should make overtures
to him, he filled in his leisure at Wierzchownia by inventing the
_King of Beggars_, which he announced to his friend Laurent Jan as an
up-to-date play flattering the all-powerful plebs; and he likewise
sketched a tragedy in which Madame Dorval was to have the chief role.
This was in April, 1849, and, a few weeks later, Madame Dorval was
dead. Only on the 23rd of August 1851, a year after his own death, did
his executors meet with a director, Monsieur Montigny of the Gymnase,
who undertook to stage _Mercadet the Jobber_. Less intransigent than
Balzac, the executors allowed its five acts to be reduced to three,
and a considerable amount of suppression and remodelling to be
operated by a professional playwright, Adolphe Dennery. Performed with
these concessions to theatrical requirements and popular taste, and
with Geoffroy in the chief role, failing Lemaitre and Regnier,
_Mercadet_ pleased the public greatly, too greatly for some bull and
bear habitues of the Bourse, who feared that their pockets might
suffer. Owing to their complaints, the Minister for the Interior
temporarily suspended the representations, basing his interdiction on
the ground that expressions struck out by the Censor had been inserted
again by the actors.
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