In January (1873), came the annual elimination examination. Gabrielle, like the rest, submitted to the test that weeded out the less promising pupils. She had a rôle—that of Agnes—not altogether suited to her, her dress was not too well chosen, she was at the most awkward of ages, and she was by no means the prettiest girl of the lot. Gazing at her, Edward Thierry, director of the Comédie Française, said in a doubtful tone to Regnier, “Do we keep this?” “Yes,” promptly replied Regnier, “she is in my class and she stays.” At the end of the school year came the annual competition. For her part in the preliminary examination Regnier chose L’Intrigue Épistolaire. Thierry, again one of the judges, failed to recognize her and said, “This child is charming! She is the hope of the competition.” And, imitating his colleague’s former doubting tone, Regnier now said, “We keep this, then?”
In the competition itself Gabrielle, in this same scene of L’Intrigue Épistolaire, fell just short of a prize and received a premier accessit, or honorable mention,—not bad for a girl just turned sixteen and a mere beginner.[95]
In this competition Mlle. Legault won the first prize in comedy and with it a post at the Comédie Française. Her departure left vacant a scholarship of 1,200 francs. In the same competition her successor to the scholarship was to be determined. Regnier had resolved to get the scholarship, if possible, for Gabrielle. The professors who sat in judgment were forbidden by a rule of the Conservatoire to impart personally any news of the outcome. Such information was to come only from the administration. Regnier, however, conspired with his favorite pupil to relieve her of suspense. If she were the successful candidate for the scholarship he was to rub his nose as he left the building. After the meeting, therefore, she stood anxiously in the porte-cochère, awaiting her teacher and the behavior of his index finger. Imagine the importance of the moment to the rather shabbily dressed, not too well-fed, nervously anxious girl. To stay her hunger as she waited she was eating bits from a long loaf tucked under her arm. First came M. Legouvé, who, by a curious chance, rubbed his nose briskly as he left the building. Then came MM. Beauplan and Ambroise Thomas, and each, oddly enough, suddenly gave his nose a vigorous rub. Gabrielle wondered, but could not believe that all these demonstrations were for her. Finally, out came Regnier, smiling, and slowly rubbing his nose with the end of his forefinger. For the moment the loaf of bread had been forgotten. Now she waved it aloft, dancing about in an ecstasy of joy.
The winning of the scholarship made it possible for Gabrielle to go on with her studies in the two months’ interval that preceded the reopening of the Conservatoire.
Francisque Sarcey was discerning enough to note the promise in this sixteen year old girl. He said of her, in speaking to the playwright Meilhac: “She has a face you would know as Parisian a mile off ... and she is full of the devil. If this girl doesn’t make her way, I shall be much surprised.... She is charming; she is piquant; and if I were a manager I would engage her out of hand.”
To eke out the family income, Gabrielle had two pupils, youngster though she was. They were young girls from Gascony, and it was her task to cure them of their un-Parisian accent. She remembers that one day when she was on her way to her pupils, the omnibus passed a church. The crowd about the door, and the numerous flowers, denoted a funeral. “They are burying Desclée,”[96] said a fellow passenger. Gabrielle had seen Desclée in some of her notable successes:—Froufrou, La Femme de Claude, La Princesse Georges—and had been stirred to renewed ambition by her art. So now she was tempted to alight and pay her respects to the dead actress’ memory; but she remembered her lesson, and went on to her pupils.
Her last year (1873–4) at the Conservatoire Mme. Réjane remembers not only for its months of hard study but for an incident or two that, trivial in themselves, had considerable importance in her youthfully ambitious mind. One morning Regnier called on her to recite “La Fille d’Honneur,” a poem she had memorized by hearing it often spoken by a fellow pupil. She was horribly nervous. Her own two pupils were present, as auditrices, and Gabrielle feared the usual frequent interruption of Regnier, who as a rule made his pupils repeatedly go back over imperfectly recited passages. This time, however, he allowed her to proceed to the end, which agitated her still more, and then he said in a solemn tone as if pronouncing a final judgment on her: “C’est très bien, ma petite; descends, tu seras une grande artiste.” Réjane says that the intense joy of that instant never was equaled afterwards, even in the moments of her greatest triumphs.
The pupils of the Conservatoire were permitted to accept engagements to play on Sundays at the little theatre of the Tour-d’Auvergne. There it was that Gabrielle made her first public appearance. The play was Les Deux Timides, and in acting it she had the inexpert assistance of Albert Carré. In the middle of the piece M. Carré was seated at a desk, writing a letter, when his nose began to bleed. He bolted from the stage, leaving the débutante alone to face her first audience in the midst of a staggering contretemps. Advice was hoarsely whispered from the wings to do this or that, to walk off, to sit down, to wait for Carré; Gabrielle coolly seated herself and took up the writing of the letter until, a moment later, the bleeding stopped, Carré returned.[97]
When the concours of 1874 arrived—the annual prize contest of the Conservatoire—Gabrielle’s progress had been such that her fellow-students and her professor all thought her sure of the first prize in comedy. Regnier chose for her one of Roxelane’s scenes in Les Trois Sultanes. When she had finished she felt that she had done herself scant justice. Then the unexpected happened. She was also to appear in a dialogue called La Jeunesse, by Emile Augier. A youthful couple met at a fountain. The young man says: “Cyprienne!” She exclaims: “Ah! Mon Dieu!” Gabrielle delivered this commonplace speech with such a sincerity and intensity of emotion that the audience broke into applause. Reassured, she played the dialogue through to the end with a command of emotional acting that surprised even her friends, for she had been thought of as only a comédienne, a soubrette.
When the prizes were announced, Gabrielle found that she had not only missed getting the first comedy prize, but that she was to get only a share of the second; the other half was to go to Mlle. Jeanne Samary, she “of the perfect laugh.”