Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/64

 her time in this attic lying on her little bed studying the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine.

We have a most amusing account of a visit paid by an intimate friend to the Rue Traversière. He found the young tragedian, who by her extraordinary genius had turned the heads of all Paris, in the little kitchen preparing the vegetables for the family pot-au-feu. At intervals she stopped peeling the potatoes and scraping the carrots, to reprove and silence the younger children who had been left in her charge during her mother's absence. When they were more than usually incorrigible she solemnly laid down the knife and potato and administered condign punishment to one of them. This done, she returned to her occupation and the subject she was discussing, as if nothing had happened.

We do not wish in any way to under-estimate the advantages Rachel derived from the dramatic training she obtained from Saint Aulaire and Samson, but there is little doubt that these hours spent studying what she was afterwards to personate, studying also at an age that is eminently receptive, and at which ideas and images are formed which remain unmodified and unchanged in after life, was one of the secrets of her unconventionality and originality. The intellect of youth is despotic and obstinate in its enthusiasms and views; so I see it, and so it shall be, is the usual attitude of the youthful mind; and if it have the second sight of sensibility, its instincts and impulses are better than any drilling, or teaching of ancient methods.

Rachel not only possessed this inner sensibility, she had also the power of observing external events, and fusing them into her ideal existence, thus collecting materials which, when they were welded into place and received her individual expression, became "points"