Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/157

 "because," as she said, "in spite of his wife, he had always defended her, and criticised favourably her first efforts at the Théâtre Français." George Sand, like many other great artists, had the ambition to do what Nature had decreed she never could do—write a great play; and, we have no doubt, unconsciously the actress offended the authoress by showing a reluctance to appear in her compositions.

Only this year, 1848, a prologue, Le Roi Attend, from the great novelist's pen, was brought out at the Français: Molière was supposed to have fallen asleep, worn out with fatigue, over the half-written page of an improvised piece he was preparing for the recreation of Louis XIV. In his dream the Muse of Poetry (represented by Rachel), appeared to him, surrounded by Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Beaumarchais. They told the sleeping poet the influence they had had and would have, on the human mind. Indulging in pompous and tiresome tirades, they informed him that dramatic poets prepared the freedom of nations; that what they sowed the people reaped, &c. &c. The clouds then closed, the vision disappeared, and the sleeping poet was awakened by his faithful servant, who told him the King was waiting. Molière exclaimed, "What! are there yet kings?" Upon this witticism the curtain fell. It was only acted a few times. At one of the rehearsals the actress met George Sand smoking a cigar. She turned away with a stage aside, "What bad tobacco!" "and seemed inclined," as a looker-on said, "to call the firemen to put out the fire."

The Princess Belgiojoso once invited her to supper. "No," was the petulant answer, "I won't go; I should find George Sand smoking a cigar as big as