Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/132

 and much bad logic perpetrated lately on the subject of the morality of the stage. On the one hand, it is maintained that very few women can preserve their modesty and virtue, subjected to the unnatural life and numerous temptations to which they are exposed in a theatrical career; on the other, it is stated that the stage is as honourable and honest a calling as man or woman can take up, and examples have been brought forward to prove the statement. But considering the numbers who throng the stage, the very persistency with which these few examples are referred to, and the smallness of their number, is rather a demonstration that the ordinary level of theatrical morality is not particularly high. "Pour juger la comédienne il ne faut pas se mettre au même point de vue que pour juger la bourgeoise," says a well-known French theatrical critic, and his opinion is endorsed by most of those who impartially consider the question. In judging the virtues and vices of those who cater for the amusement of the public as playwrights, the same code of propriety will not hold good as for men and women in the ordinary walks of life. The nervous excitable temperament is a necessary accompaniment of the dramatic one. The actress, before she can adequately portray fictitious emotion or passion of any kind, must be susceptible to emotion and passion herself. After acting one of her great parts, Rachel, unable to sleep, so great had been the mental tension, would wander about all night, sometimes going out of Paris as far as the Bois de Boulogne, where, in her childhood, she had spent so many hours robbed from school.

Intoxicated by applause, carried away by "les émotions suprêmes du théâtre" night after night, dazzled by the glare of the footlights, listening every