it). You shall come and hear it to-night, there will be only three or four of you present.' 'Then I am to announce that Mademoiselle Rachel will sing the "Marseillaise" at the Théâtre Française?' 'Certainly; don't you think it will bring in money, now that all the theatres are deserted?' 'That depends, I must hear it first.' In short, when the public performance of the evening was over, we assembled in the green-room. With her family collected around her, and the tricolour flag in her hand, she began the celebrated song, which she had previously studied verse by verse, note by note. All the world knows what she made of it! It was not singing, properly so-called, but a recitation, in which the strength of accentuation and the power of expression supplied the want of melody. It made the hearers tremble and shudder. The success was as great as the conception was daring. The 'Marseillaise' brought in as much as three of Corneille's finest tragedies."
Rachel has been much blamed for pandering to the passions of the crowd by declaiming on that stage, which until now had been almost exclusively reserved for the dramatic masterpieces of France, the chant of woe of 1793. Jules Janin implored her, when she came to ask his advice, not to awaken the dangerous echo of bloodshed and violence. She represented the financial difficulties of the theatre, the impossibility of filling it in the present excited state of men's feelings. "I do not know," was the wise answer, "if the theatre needs the 'Marseillaise' to build up its falling fortunes; but you need neither the theatre nor the 'Marseillaise' to build up yours. Keep to Camille and Cinna, and don't set passions aflame which it may be beyond your power to control. Remember, also, all the benefits
