Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/214

 Shortly after her arrival in New York, Rachel was asked by the French colony there to sing the "Marseillaise." She refused, addressing the following letter to the deputation who had been commissioned to make the request:—

A witty travesty of this letter was given at the time: it began—

Both by hearsay and experience; the Americans had been made aware of the exacting and greedy temperament of Rachel and her brother, and many were the jokes made at their expense. It was, indeed, in this pitiless New World that Rachel was destined to test how low she had descended in her art. She was wont to say, La fortune c'est la mésuremesure [sic] de l'intelligence"; and in the pursuit of fortune, not to advance the honour of Racine or Corneille, she had come across the Atlantic. The company of actors she had brought with her were, as one critic frankly expressed himself, "but a bundle of Hebrew sticks destined to fill the minor characters." No attempt was made to put the tragedies fittingly on the stage. Beauvallet gives a