If mother and daughter had continued to live in the immediate neighborhood of the Ambigu it is not unlikely that the already lively ambition of the girl would have found its outlet at that theatre. We have seen something of her enthusiasm for the Ambigu and her close relationship with its entourage. Once launched upon her career there as an actress of popular drama, she would very likely have remained there and missed the valuable training that she was to receive at the Conservatoire. As it happened, however, when she was about ten her mother moved from Rue de Lancry to 17 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, and in large measure the influence of the Ambigu was removed.
On the same floor with Madame Réju and her daughter in their new quarters lived a lady with whom they gradually formed a close friendship. When the war of 1870 broke out, the new friend left Paris, leaving her apartment in charge of Mme. Réju and Gabrielle. There the windows, unlike those of Mme. Réju’s own suite, overlooked the street. When the Commune brought the terrors of civil war to Paris, it was from these windows that the child witnessed what was to her a terrible and long-remembered sight, a street battle between the government troops and the Communists. The bodies of slain men, carried past under those windows, gave her her first glimpse of death.
The war past, Gabrielle, now fourteen, returned to school at the Pension Boulet, Rue Pigalle. She applied herself diligently to her somewhat neglected studies, and to such good purpose that the mistress of the school, with whom Gabrielle had become a favorite, offered her a position as an assistant with the younger pupils. She was to be paid forty francs a month, and her luncheon. To her mother this seemed to be the opening of an honorable career. Not so Gabrielle herself, who cherished constantly her already fixed ambition to be an actress. She was, however, fond of children, and to tide affairs over she took a class of the younger pupils. She got along well enough with them with their ordinary lessons, but her own instruction in sewing and embroidery had been neglected, and she had to have the help of the older of her pupils, to bridge the gap.
Occasionally, of a Sunday evening, Gabrielle was taken by her mother to the house of a friend who gathered about herself a modest salon. There came such men as Félicien David, the composer, Joseph Kelm, the writer, and the architect, Frantz Jourdain. Gabrielle, young as she was, with her natural gayety and spontaneity at once took her place in the circle. She would sing for the assembly the popular songs of the day—compositions often full of doubtful meanings that she very imperfectly understood. Her little successes naturally strengthened her longing to be an actress, to stir great houses as she amused this little circle of friends.
To Gabrielle’s increasing ambition her mother set herself in opposition. To her mind the forty francs per month was not lightly to be sacrificed. And she said she did not care to be the mother of an actress. She lived to own herself in the wrong.
One evening, as mother and daughter were passing the Théâtre Français, they saw a crowd at the stage door. They questioned a bystander and were told that this had been the farewell performance of Regnier. Gabrielle insisted on waiting to see him come out. She had never seen him, but every one knew of Regnier, great artist and lovable personality. Soon he appeared, a little, old man, who got up into his carriage and acknowledged the ovation with a modest and confused air. Gabrielle never forgot her first and touching glimpse of the man to whom she was soon to owe so much.
The struggle with her mother over her cherished plan to go on the stage went on for another year. A Mlle. Angelo, a friend of Mme. Réju, attempted to make peace by offering Gabrielle a dot of 10,000 francs if she would accept a plan to marry as a solution of the difficulty. But Gabrielle refused to be bought off, and steadfastly clung to her ambition, with the result that the mother at last gave in.
The friend from whose windows Gabrielle had seen the battling Communists had returned to Paris and now took up the girl’s cause. She introduced Gabrielle to Charles Simon,[94] who knew well the actor Regnier, now an honored teacher at the Conservatoire. The girl was duly introduced to Regnier, who received her affably but tried to dissuade her from attempting the career of an actress. He was unable to overcome the ardent resolution of Gabrielle, and finally consented to receive her, for two months, on the condition that if at the end of the time she failed to convince him of her calling she would promise to give up the attempt for good and all. Sure of success, she promised.
Regnier’s first task was to cure his pupil of a thickness of diction. For hours every day she practiced enunciation, but found her master hard to please. Nevertheless he must have seen promise in her, for during the summer (of 1872) he wrote to Charles Simon that when classes assembled he would receive Gabrielle as a regularly enrolled pupil. When the Conservatoire reopened, she passed her entrance examination by reading the rôle of Henriette in Les Femmes Savantes, and was admitted. Here began, when she was fifteen, the serious work of her career.
She was an ardent pupil. Not content with the regular course, she and her mother squeezed their narrow means that the girl might amplify her studies with a number of private lessons with Regnier at his house. He gave her the lessons, but when she offered to pay, he refused to accept. “One does not accept pay,” he said, “when he is privileged to deal with the temperament of an artist.” And, thus, the trial months past, Regnier, instead of sending Gabrielle packing, engaged himself to teach her as best he could, gratis, till her period as a student should end.