Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/126

 j'etai t'auétais au [sic] Gymnase," was her greeting; "to which," he says, "I was obliged to answer in the same jargon, 'Je le savionssavais [sic].

Count Molé, one of the would-be connoisseurs moving in artistic society in Paris, wishing to pay the young actress a compliment, said to her one evening at a dinner at Verons, "You have saved the French language, Mademoiselle, from the hosts of barbarians who endeavour to destroy it." "Monsieur," she said, "that is the more wonderful, seeing that I never knew it."

She was the first to confess her own deficiencies and laugh at them. She writes to Madame la Comtesse Duchâtel:—

"Little pedant," she said, with an air of the utmost dignity, to Rebecca one day, when she made some observation about her great sister's grammar, "let me inform you that women like myself make and unmake grammar as they please."

On one occasion she had to write a letter of thanks to the Minister for Home Affairs, M. Baroche. Before sending it she showed it to Arsène Houssaye, who advised her to recopy it, and correct some orthographical errors.

"Ah, bah!" she replied; "let them stand. My letter will appear all the more sincere."

Collectors of autographs in Paris are said to pay from five to ten guineas for a letter of Rachel. They