her passion, pitched in a low key at first, rose higher and higher, until it reached the climax, and flashed out wild and reckless in its sweep. Then her strength seemed to ebb away, leaving her exhausted, and hardly able to act to the end.
With the love of hyperbole, so common among the crowd, Rachel's want of education and literary taste has always been greatly exaggerated. A recent writer in the Nineteenth Century talks of her well-known "obtuseness of perception" and deficiency of "critical judgment." There is little doubt, as Samson tells us, that, in consequence of the poverty of her parents, her education was very much neglected, and that her success on the stage was made at too early an age to admit of regular study afterwards; but that she was "obtuse in perception" is utterly inaccurate. On the contrary, what raises both Rachel and Talma so far above all others in their profession was their extraordinary "intellectual power." The idea of her deficiency in critical faculty gained substantiality from the bad plays she accepted and the good ones she rejected. Outsiders did not see the social and expedient reasons that so often influenced her in so doing; and we must remember that her choice was by no means final, and was always ratified or rejected by the Committee of the Théâtre Français. If they, then—professionals practised in catering for the public taste—were led away, how much more must she have been, who had her friends, such as pretty and charming Madame de Girardin, to think of, and a host of other considerations?
Janin first gave currency to the exaggerated statements of her ignorance in his weekly feuilleton. He declared that he met her the day after she had taken Paris by storm in the part of Camille. "C'est moi que
