Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/231

Rh private motives, into which it is not permitted to pry. A first prize carries with it the right of entrance into the Comédie Française; and the Jury did not think Mademoiselle Réjane, with her little wide-awake face, suited to the vast frame of the House of Moliere, That is well enough; but the second prize, which it awarded her, authorises the Director of the Odéon to receive her into his Company; and that perspective alone ought to have sufficed to dissuade the Jury from the course it took. . . . . Every one knows that at present the Odeon is, for a beginner, a most indifferent school. . . . . Instead of shoving its promising pupils into it by the shoulders, the Conservatoire should forbid them to approach it, lest they should be lost there. What will Mademoiselle Réjane do at the Odeon? Show her legs in La Jeunesse de Louis XIV. which is to be revived at the opening of the season! A pretty state of things. She must either go to the Vaudeville or to the Gymnase. It is there that she will form herself; it is there that she will learn her trade, show what she is capable of, and prepare herself for the Comédie Française, if she is ever to enter it. . . . . She recited a fragment from Les Trois Sultanes. . . . . I was delighted by her choice. The Trois Sultanes is so little known nowadays. . . . . What wit there is in her look, her smile! With her small eyes, shrewd and piercing, with her little face thrust forward, she has so knowing an air, one is inclined to smile at the mere sight of her. Does she perhaps show a little too much assurance? What of it? 'Tis the result of excessive timidity. But she laughs with such good grace, she has so fresh and true a voice, she articulates so clearly, she seems so happy to be alive and to have talent, that involuntarily one thinks of Chénier's line:

Sa bienvenue au jour lui rlt dans tous les yeux.

. . . . I shall be surprised if she does not make her way."

Praised be Sarcey! That was better than a second prize for Réjane. The Oracle gave her the first, without dividing it. She The Yellow Book—Vol. II