Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/120

 you may not be obliged to ask me for it." She gave a Damascus sword to Beauvallet the actor, who said immediately, "I warn you you shall not take it back again, for I will have a chain put to it."

There are many amusing anecdotes told, too, of the barefaced manner in which Rachel asked for things. Arsène Houssaye relates that one evening she was dining with the Minister of the Interior, Comte Duchâtel. She expressed her admiration of the centre-piece on the table that was decorated with flowers. M. Duchâtel immediately bent forward and despoiled it of its flowers, which he offered to the young actress.

"Oh! it was not the flowers, but the bowl I admired so much," she said with a smile.

"You shall have it, then, as well as the flowers," answered her host in a sudden fit of generosity.

"Monsieur le Comte," was the answer, "your roses and violets delight my heart, but your centre-piece will be the ornament and wonder of my dining-room."

Rachel had come in a cab to dinner; when the time for leaving approached, the Minister offered her his brougham to take her home.

"With pleasure," she said; "then I can take your present with me without fear of being waylaid and robbed."

Her host conducted her to the top of the staircase himself. "I am delighted, Mademoiselle," he said, with a sarcastic smile, as he bade her good-night, "that you should have my silver bowl; but you will send me back my brougham, will you not?"

"Often," Houssaye adds, "did I dine at Rachel's and see the bowl, made on the model of Pliny's doves in the Capitol, and smile a sympathetic smile of fellow