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148 I am glad to hear you speak of her as Athene. Rachel is known to us only as Rachel, and Sarah Bernhardt was Sarah for the greater part of her life. And her death having made her an actuality, I will tell you that Halévy, who saw the three French actresses, looked upon Sarah as the least, a long way behind Rachel in tragedy and as far behind Desclée in comedy.

Did he give reasons for his preference?

I did not press him to give reasons; his reasons seemed obvious to me, for I was thinking of Sarah's usual indifference to the play she was acting in, putting herself always in front of it, using it as a means for a cunning display of her tricks and mannerisms, and certain moments of it for an exhibition of theatrical passion in which the play and some handkerchiefs were torn into rags. Halévy could not approve of such an interpretation; no author could, I no more than Halévy, and I felt with Halévy and for Halévy when I saw Sarah walk through two acts of Frou-Frou and part of the third act, conveying no impression of the play, nor even of herself, seeming as commonplace an actress as her sister in the play; a shameful trick, ruining two acts so that in the third, when her moment came, she might bound about the stage like an enraged tigress till the house seemed about to come down. Of course, it came down in the figurative sense and everybody was delighted; but I, who had seen her at the Français in the 'seventies, found excuses for her, saying to myself as I returned through the jostling Strand: This is the fruit of her travels in countries in which the French language is unknown.

If I understand you rightly, Mr your appreciations of Sarah's acting were certain magical moments for which much was sacrificed?

Much was sacrificed, but the moments did not delight me, nor could they have delighted Halévy, who had seen the original Frou-Frou, Aimée Desclée. She was in London just before or during the war of 'seventy, and I saw her in one of Dumas fils' morality plays, Les Idées de Madame Aubray; but I did not know French then and was too young to appreciate shades. I am sure, however, that she acted from the beginning of the play to the end. She died during the war, and in the early 'seventies all Paris was talking about her in studio and in drawing-room. In the studio in the Passage des Panoramas Julian used to delight my young ears with a description of Desclée as Diane de Lys searching among