streets, had been given with her. Sarah remembered some of them, and would rehearse them later with great effect to a limited audience.
It was to the elder sister Rachel wrote when, after acting for three months at the Théâtre Français, she found she had aroused the ill-will of her comrades, begging her to return and give her courage, not to face the spectators, who were kindness itself, but to face the ladies and gentlemen of the theatre, who treated her "like a wild beast."
It is to her ear alone she confided if she were wounded in her professional pride, if a new role had been a failure, or a tour in the provinces or abroad had not been so successful as anticipated. It is to her she is found confiding the passions, numerous and violent, which she inspired, sometimes in the outside public, sometimes in members of her own company:—
My dear Sarah,
No doubt you will be astonished to see my handwriting so often; but, ma foi, the letter that I have this moment received from X seems so surprising that I send it to you, as a master-piece of the passion with which I inspired him. Mercifully, my real Michonnet[1] (the theatre) is there to console me in case I utterly despair.
Then, when the end came, and, as a last resource, she was ordered to La Cannet in the autumn of 1857, it was Sarah who accompanied her and who never left her bedside until her eyes were closed in death. Through good report and evil report, these two, in spite of violent quarrels and many separations, remained loyal to one another.
Sarah, of all the sisters, had the least dramatic
- ↑ Michonnet is the faithful friend who counsels and helps Adrienne Lecouvreur, in the drama of that name.
