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Book, page 251 / 264 Rastignac, he, like a good fellow, renounces his own matrimonial project and assists the old father in marrying the lovers happily. The part of Goriot was acted by Vernet, who did entire justice to Balzac's great creation. Simultaneously at the Vaudeville, another and poorer version of the novel was given; and, in 1891, at the Theatre Libre, Tabarand experimented a third piece, this last being a faithful reproduction of the novel. Antoine scored a big success in the part of Goriot, rendering the death-bed scene with remarkable power and skill. In 1836, /La Grande Breteche/, with its vengeful husband who walls up his wife's lover alive, tempted Scribe and another playwright, Melesville. In their arrangement, there is a virtuous wife whose husband is a bigamist. On learning the truth, she consents to receive the visit of Lara, an admirer of hers, whom she loves; and, when the Bluebeard, Valdini, surprises his victim and proceeds to the immurement, his first wife slips in most conveniently and whisks him off, leaving Valentine free to marry Lara. It is curious to notice how, in almost every instance, the first adapting dramatists transformed Balzac's tragedies into comedies, softening the stern facts of life and its injustices, and meting out the juster rewards and punishments which the novelist's realism forbade. In Antony Beraud's /Gars/, a play drawn from the /Chouans/ and performed at the Ambigu-Comique in 1837, the hero and heroine, instead of dying, are saved by a political amnesty decreed by Napoleon; and the curtain falls to the cry of /Vive l'Empereur/. More than fifty years later, in 1894, the same theatre gave a close rendering of the dramatic portions of the /Chouans/, due to the collaboration of Berton and Blavet, the tragic ending being preserved, with all the effects properly belonging to it. Commonplace, like the /Gars/, were the arrangements of the /Search for the Absolute/, in 1837, and /Cesar Birotteau/ in 1838. The former was staged under the bizarre title, /A+Mx=O+X, or the Dream of a Savant/. The authors, Bayard and Bieville, concealed their identity under an algebraic X as well; and their piece, which made Balthazar Claes a Parisian chemist and a candidate to a vacant chair in the College de France, failed to attract at the Gymnase, in spite of Bouffe's talent
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