Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/212

 found too large for the slipper. She wavered for a moment. Then someone rushed forward and caught her as she fell—and the curtain came down.

There was no attempt at a recall. There was something too real in the whole scene. The audience silently arose and slowly separated. Ladies sat in groups upon the benches with white faces and red eyes. They all thought her beautiful. They all forgave everything, and they all denied everything. It was a rare triumph. We so love what we greatly admire, that we all longed to love Rachel.

From Raphaël's point of view it was not a success. They made 5,016 dollars (26,334 francs), but what a falling off when compared with the 93,786 francs produced by Jenny Lind's first representation, which they had hoped to rival and even surpass. The second evening on which Phèdre was given, the receipts fell off by 7,000 francs, only 19,587 francs being made. Never again were the profits as large as the first evening.

Rachel had deceived herself, or rather her brother Raphaël had deceived her by deceiving himself. The prognostication that "Cousin Jonathan would not relish an unmusical drama not acted in his own language" was verified. They were obliged to buy a book and study the play before they went. Beauvallet tells a story of an American, on one occasion when Le Mari de la Veuve and Bajazet were being acted, reading the first through religiously, thinking it was the second. Rachel declared that the turning of the pages startled her the first evening, for it sounded on the stage like a shower of hail, and added, with a smile, that she would have all the libretti rearranged so as to bring the fine passages into the middle of the page; but the thing that tried her most was the way in which, after one or two acts, the audience disappeared. Beauvallet tells us they simply came to be able to say