"Stop, that is for you to do." She lifted up to me her beautiful hand, which I stopped to kiss in its passage.

"And even empresses!" I repeated.

"All right, I want to play a woman of the people."

"Yes! I know you! You would play that in a velvet dress and all your diamonds."

"No! I tell you, I mean a woman of the people, a beggar-woman!"

"Bah! Come forward as far as the footlights, stretch your hand out to the audience, and there would be no more play, or rather no more beggar-woman."

"What pasture have you been browsing on to-day?"

"On one which grew in your dressing-room one day when Harel shut me up to write Napoléon."

"Come, be quiet with you, and write me my play."