Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/128



Once I saw a great actress play Madame X. Another time I saw a less-gifted actress play the rôle. I could write from here to the outskirts of Omsk on the art of the actor—but stay! I do not intend to. I can make my point by contrasting those two performances.

The great actress was Sarah Bernhardt. The performance was a benefit at which she gave the second act of the play. Madame X returns to the husband she has betrayed and left eighteen years earlier, and begs humbly for a glimpse and a word with her son, whom she has not seen since he was a child of two. Meanwhile she has sunk to infamy. Of course she will not betray for an instant to the son that she is his mother, she pleads to the father, but oh, for pity's sake, just a fleeting sight of him in his man's estate! The husband refuses sternly, as he is entirely justified in doing in ethics; she is not a woman of one mistake. But the audience will hate