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 prolongation of congé and a continuance of her salary. He communicated with the Director of the theatre and obtained leave of absence until 31st May 1857, and the payment of her salary. Her enemies were in the habit of declaring that Rachel's best piece of acting was the part of the malade imaginaire, and her unjustifiable pleas of bad health when she wished to shirk her duty told against her now. The public, and even many of her comrades, were incredulous; they thought it was another of the great tragedian's caprices, and she left Paris to a certain extent under a cloud. She was too weak and sad now, however, to mind much what the world said or thought. Her old friend, Jules Janin, did not let her go without a kindly word of "sincere and paternal tenderness." He told her she was still his child: that he had seen her grow up and reach the highest aim of her ambition. Now weariness, illness, and regrets for the art she was obliged for a time to forsake, were likely to discourage her. "But be strong and hopeful! Give yourself up to that Eastern sun and warm breezes which will restore you, happy and inspired, to those who love you, and to the great art of Tragedy, which has no future but in Rachel."

"À revoir, chère et tendre mère," she wrote to her anxious, heart-broken mother from Malta, on her way to Egypt, "ne fais aucun canevas de drame pendant mon absence." But, in spite of the delusions of the disease which sustained her in her brighter moments, she knew that there might be no revoir for her, and that the fifth act of the drama of her life was fast approaching.

On her arrival in Cairo, she was greeted by the French colony there with enthusiasm, and accepted