Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/215

 most comic account of the arrangements for the representation of Virginie:—

"No Lares or Penates to be found; the Roman forum represented by the Paris Boulevards, with restaurant painted on one of the nearest houses, while a flowered carpet covered the street. The hundred lictors of Appius were represented by twenty nondescript individuals disguised in yellow coats of mail, red petticoats, blue breeches, large tin spears in their hands, old leather boots on their legs, and, to complete all, American 'goatees' on their chins. Ballet girls in muslin petticoats, men dressed as jockeys, and mediæval Spaniards, put the finishing touch to the medley."

When the curtain went up, the scene was greeted by a roar of laughter from the audience. And Appius' lictors had to submit to a continual fire of ridicule.

In the meantime, to add to her discomfiture and annoyance, came rumours, from Paris of the publicity that had been given to the non-success of the expedition. Janin, in one of his eloquent, amusing, and merciless feuilletons, rated her and the Americans soundly. He touched upon the "demande impie" that had been made to her to sing the "Marseillaise," and upon her refusal to accede to the request:—

"But Mademoiselle Rachel did not answer with the indignation justifiable under the circumstances. She said she had no voice left to sing the Marseillaise, but what she really ought to have answered was, 'What? I come to you, my brain full of chef d'œuvreschefs-d'œuvre [sic], my hands full of palms and crowns; I come bringing you the miracles of three great centuries, bringing you Augustus, Pericles, and Louis XIV., and you ask me for the "Marseillaise"? I bring you Corneille and