Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/77

 True to her word, she arrived next day, and remained for an hour talking about theatrical affairs.

She came, indeed, on several succeeding days, and ended by extorting the promise of a rôle. Still Alfred had no faith in the genuineness of her intentions, and, as she soon after left for another tour in England, the matter remained in abeyance. Meantime, Madeleine Brohan won all hearts in Les Caprices de Marianne. Rachel, piqued by this success, wrote from London, begging Alfred to remember his promise. Encouraged by her persistence, he began a drama in five acts, the scene of which he laid in Venice in the fifteenth century. The fragment—for it never was finished—is published among his posthumous papers under the name of Faustine. Another misunderstanding arose, which was destined definitely to end the friendship between the great tragédienne and the great poet, a friendship which ought to have been prolific in results for the dramatic art of the day. They seemed formed to stimulate each other's powers, but unfortunately, something antagonistic in the two natures negatived the possibilities of their genius.

"Please persuade Léon Gozlan to compose a short piece for me, Musset being dead—to literature," she writes to a friend a little later. We find him about the same time shutting up in his desk the piece he was writing for her, with these words, "Adieu, Rachel; c'est toi que j’ensevelis pour jamais."

Alfred de Musset threw away his birthright in this instance, as in so many others. She may have been capricious and changeable; but there is little doubt, if he had completed a drama and brought it to her for acceptance, she, who accepted so much that was worth-