Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/207

 On the 29th April 1855 she had been appointed Professor of Declamation at the Conservatoire, and her friends urged this, among other pleas, to persuade her not to go; but in vain. Pique, jealousy, the wish to add fresh laurels to those already won, and the hope of returning triumphant to Paris, and thus regaining the position she had lost, or, as she expressed it, becoming again "La Tragédienne," not "Une tragédienne," all conspired to fortify her resolution, and make her deaf to warnings and entreaties.

Before her departure she consented to appear once more, suing for the suffrages of those who, until now, she had ruled despotically. Alas! the fickle public, like Clésinger, the sculptor, not only set np a new statue, but broke the old one. The foreigners that flocked to Paris for the Great Exhibition, and the Parisians themselves, angry with the favourite who was leaving them, and glad, as Alfred de Musset says, of a change, flocked to the Italian Opera House to hear Ristori. No longer were there queues down to the Rue du Fauboug St. Honoré; no longer struggling at the box-office for tickets. Many certainly came, but the receipts did not exceed, and in some cases were not so large as those when Rachel first appeared in 1838. Would it have been otherwise had they known that her name had appeared for the last time on the bills of the Comédie Française—that never again would they hear that musical, sad voice, or see that weary, pale face, or be moved to awe, pity, and terror by the sublimity and greatness of that genius, to which they dared to compare the artificial elaboration of her Italian rival? We, indeed, except from the fascination of Ristori's beautiful appearance and manner, find it difficult to understand