The influential critic, though he displayed the ease of a man accustomed to every sort of festivity, really felt astonished at it all, and became servile, promising his support, and pledging himself far more than he really wished to.

Moreover, he showed himself very gay, found some witty remarks to repeat, and even some rather ribald jests.
But when the champagne appeared after the roast and the grand burgundies, his over-excitement brought him back perforce to his real nature.

The conversation had now turned on Corneille's "Polyeucte" and the part of "Pauline," in which Silviane wished to make her _debut_ at the Comedie Francaise.

This extraordinary caprice, which had quite revolted the influential critic a week previously, now seemed to him simply a bold enterprise in which the young woman might even prove victorious if she consented to listen to his advice.

And, once started, he delivered quite a lecture on the past, asserting that no actress had ever yet understood it properly, for at the outset Pauline was simply a well-meaning little creature of the middle classes, and the beauty of her conversion at the finish arose from the working of a miracle, a stroke of heavenly grace which endowed her with something divine.