The junketings, speechifying and fond embracing that marked the celebration dinner given by Dazincourt in 1799 denoted a natural feeling of relief that the fragmented company, the Maison de Moliére, had after ten years of discord been reunited at last. The sociétaires supposed, short-sightedly, that they would take up where they had left off and would rapidly recover lost ground, regaining the high reputation they had enjoyed in the eyes of all those who appreciated good ensemble acting; and they probably looked no farther. Few of them could have reflected that the price to be paid for so glittering a future was yet to be determined. The Ministry of the Interior, which had worked to make possible this new beginning, had certain expectations that were not slow to surface; nor was it long before the actors realized that they were in future to obey the wishes of a stricter taskmaster than any of them could remember from pre-revolutionary times.

The first collision – and the last – between the actors and the government occurred in 1801 and settled matters once and for all: in future, the Comédie-Françfaise was to give up all thoughts it might have entertained that it was to run its own affairs without interference; quite a different political breeze was blowing now, and likely to continue blowing in the same direction for the foreseeable future. The company had been ill-advised enough to advertise one evening a vaudeville, that is, a light comedy interspersed with songs sung to well-known tunes, of the kind Piis and Barréhad made popular on the eve of the Revolution.