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have already several times had occasion to mention the name of Samson, teacher of elocution and professor at the Conservatoire, under whose supervision and guidance the young actress studied all her great parts. As actor and author Samson was a man of considerable talent; as teacher he was a man of genius. Madame Plessis, Allan, Favart, Madeleine and Augustine Bohan, Rose Chéri, Jouassin, Stella Colás, Émilie Dubois, Aimée Desclée, were trained by him.

He had actively served the drama in France for thirty years. He had lived through some of its greatest periods—had been taught by Fleury and Baptiste Aimé, had acted with Mademoiselle Mars and Madame Dorval in their prime, and, above all, had had the inexpressible advantage of hearing Talma's dicta and lessons on the "Actor's Art" pronounced by the lips of the great tragedian himself. In his delightful Mémoires he gives an account of Talma's lectures delivered at the Conservatoire, he tells us:—

The only quality of the professor that Talma lacked was exactitude. Absent-minded and easy-going, he forgot the lesson-hour.