However, the
latter elopes with another nobleman, and Clavering marries Helene.
This pretty theme, developed by the actress Rose Cheri, made a huge
hit.
Nearly as great was the actress's success at the same theatre in 1849,
when she played the principal role in Clairville's _Madame Marneffe_ a
version of _Cousin Bette_, but very much modified, since Bette is
eliminated altogether, and Valerie Marneffe, instead of being a
depraved creature, is merely a clever woman of the world, who avenges
her father's ruin on the Baron Hulot and Crevel, they being mainly
responsible for it. When Balzac was at Wierzchownia, on his last
visit, he wrote to his mother asking her to go to the theatrical
agent's in order to receive his third of the receipts produced by the
piece. These author's royalties must have helped his purse
considerably.
In the year after the novelist's death, the applauded representation
of _Mercadet_, at the Gymnase, stimulated other managers of theatres
to go on exploiting his _Comedy_. In September, the _Shagreen Skin_,
arranged by Judicis, was played at the Ambigu-Comique, with _tableaux_
of almost literal imitation, yet bringing to life again, in the
denouement, the chief _dramatis personae_, and making the whole drama
a dream.
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