To another who asked him somewhat the same question, he replied,--

"If I were charming to all the world, how could I seem better still to
the one woman I wish to please?"

Raoul Nathan imports this same natural disorder (which he uses as a
banner) into his intellectual life; and the attribute is not
misleading. His talent is very much that of the poor girls who go
about in bourgeois families to work by the day. He was first a critic,
and a great critic; but he felt himself cheated in that vocation. His
articles were equal to books, he said. The profits of theatrical work
then allured him; but, incapable of the slow and steady application
required for stage arrangement, he was forced to associate with
himself a vaudevillist, du Bruel, who took his ideas, worked them
over, and reduced them into those productive little pieces, full of
wit, which are written expressly for actors and actresses. Between
them, they had invented Florine, an actress now in vogue.

Humiliated by this association, which was that of the Siamese twins,
Nathan had produced alone, at the Theatre-Francais, a serious drama,
which fell with all the honors of war amid salvos of thundering
articles. In his youth he had once before appeared at the great and
noble Theatre-Francais in a splendid romantic play of the style of
"Pinto,"--a period when the classic reigned supreme. The Odeon was so
violently agitated for three nights that the play was forbidden by the
censor. This second piece was considered by many a masterpiece, and
won him more real reputation than all his productive little pieces
done with collaborators,--but only among a class to whom little
attention is paid, that of connoisseurs and persons of true taste.