Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/168

 signed by Napoleon I. at Moscow on the 15th October 18151812 [sic]), the Committee of Management were confirmed in all their privileges, the free action of the company in all financial and artistic affairs being only subject to the interference or remonstrance, when necessary, of the Court Superintendent and Imperial Commissioner. The actors, therefore, had complete control of their own affairs, and community of interest, one might have thought, would have bound them together. Far from it, however; professional jealousy was too strong, and the Maison de Molière was a house continually divided against itself. Mademoiselle Mars, cold, calm, and self-interested, had for years imposed her sovereign will upon them, and now Rachel, grasping, passionate, and imperious, was twenty times worse. In 1847 the position became strained past bearing. The sociétaires saw that she was capricious, ungrateful, unscrupulous, extortionate, that she was always endeavouring to escape from her obligations to her comrades, and to do as little as she possibly could in return for the large salary she received. Under pretence of ill-health, they urged, "she was continually hurrying away and obtaining great rewards by her performances in the provinces." Indeed, during her congé of three or four months every year, she earned as much, they declared, as 30,000 francs. All this was substantially true, especially towards the latter years of Rachel's professional career in Paris. She was one of those natures who can do generous and unselfish things by impulse, but when fidelity to existing engagements, or obedience to the every-day calls of duty, is demanded of them, they avoid compliance by every means in their power.

Védel, favourable as a rule to the great tragedian,