"Are you M. Dumas?" the person inside inquired.
"Yes, madame."
"Very well, come inside and kiss me. Ah! you possess marvellous talent, and you don't draw women badly either!"
It made me laugh, and I kissed the fair speaker. She who spoke thus to me was Dorval—Dorval to whom I could have retorted in the same words—
"You have marvellous talent, and you take off women rather well."
The fact is that since we had seen Dorval act Malvina in the Vampire she had improved immensely. In the Incendiaire, especially, she had been perfectly magnificent. Those who read these lines now will not know what the play was: I can only recollect a priest's part, which Bocage played excellently well, and a confession scene in which Dorval was sublime. Picture to yourselves a young girl who has had a torch put into her hands; how, or by what means, I no longer remember, but no matter; besides, that was twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, and I have forgotten the drama and, I repeat, I can only recollect the actress. She acted the confession scene, referred to above, on her knees: it lasted a whole quarter of an hour, during which space of time one held one's breath or only breathed in weeping. One night Madame Dorval was more beautiful, more tender and more pathetic than ever: and I will tell you why. You will have seen pictures by Ruysdael and Hobbema, and will recall how rays of sunlight stray across their landscapes, lighting up a corner of the grey sky, and illuminating the misty atmosphere, where the great oxen graze in the tall grass. Well, then, listen to this. When the player is fatigued, having played the same part over from ten to fifty times, inspiration gradually dies down and genius slumbers and emotion gets deadened; the actor's sky grows grey and his atmosphere clouded, and he searches for rays of sunshine like those that illumine the canvases of Hobbema or Ruysdael. The sight of a friend among the spectators, a talented fellow-artist leaning over the dress-circle, is, to him, as a ray of sunlight; a thoughtful face with eyes shining in the dim light of a box. Then communication is established between the house and the stage; the electric current is perceived and, thanks to it, the player returns to the days of the earliest performances; all the slumbering chords awake, and suddenly weep, mourn and sob more quiveringly than ever; the public applauds and shouts bravo, and thinks that it is for it the player works these wonders. Poor deluded public! It is towards some kindred soul, unsuspected by you, that all this effort, those cries and tears are directed! You simply get the benefit of it as from dew or light or flame. But, after all, what matters it to you who pours the dew down, who spreads this light, who lights this flame, since in this dew and light and flame you refresh and light and warm yourself? So, one night, Dorval had surpassed herself—for whom? She had not the slightest idea. It was for a woman in the audience—a woman who for three hours had kept her spellbound beneath her eagle glance; for three hours Dorval saw none of the other people in the house, she wept and talked and lived and, in a word, acted for that one woman alone: when she applauded and cried "Bravo!" the actress had been paid for her labour, rewarded for her pains and compensated for her talent! She had said to herself, "I am satisfied since she is." Then the curtain had fallen and, breathless, crushed, almost dead from exhaustion, like a pythoness when removed from her tripod, Dorval went to her room; from victress she became victim, and fell half fainting upon her couch. Suddenly the door of her dressing-room opened, and the unknown woman appeared on the threshold. Dorval sprang up trembling and took her by both hands as though she were a friend. For a few minutes the two women looked at one another in silence, smiling, with tears in their eyes.
"Forgive me, madame," the unknown said, with incredible sweetness of voice; "but I could not return home without telling you of the joy, the emotion, the happiness I owe to you. Oh! it was wonderful, sublime, exquisite!"
Dorval looked at her and thanked her with her eyes, and an inclination of her head and a motion of the shoulders peculiarly her own, all the while interrogating her, inquiring with every muscle of her countenance—
"But who in the world are you, madame? Who are you?"
The unknown guessed her thoughts, and replied—only those who had heard that wonderful siren speak can conceive the sweetness of her tones—