Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/66

 but her own genius, she had as a child selected the heroic masterpieces of the early French tragedians, as the mouth-piece of her genius, and in an age when Romanticism, extravagance, and rhodomontade were at their height, the young priestess stepped forth, and lit the sacred fire on altars grown dim and cold, bringing Frenchmen's hearts back to the worship of what is truest and best in their country's literature. Poor, ill-fed, ill-taught, she had never swerved from her great ideal; and now that she was the idol of the town, overwhelmed with admiration and homage, she did not allow herself to relax in her efforts. If the performance did not come up to her own standard, she tested and tried her effects over and over again, with different poses and gestures. For three years she studied Phèdre, and for those three years she never played it twice alike. Ever endeavouring to attain what she considered the highest goal, with a mind sensitively alive to beauty of expression and form, and a marvellous power of imparting that perception to others, she never appealed to the lower passions of her audience, but strove to exalt her audience to her own level. In reading the strange, sad history of this woman, shall all these years of honest endeavour and love of art for art's sake, count as nothing when weighed in the balance in which her detractors have meted out her merits and demerits so unmercifully?

George Sand, with her liberal mind and sympathetic heart, said of Rachel: "I was not personally acquainted with her, but I know that she ever worshipped and strove towards the great and true in Art, and what better religion can any of us profess than that?"