Bernhardt grew apprehensive. She proposed a gala performance in aid of the fund for a memorial to Dumas. She announced that she would give the last two acts of La Dame aux Camélias, and that Duse had been asked to give the second and third acts of the same play. Now the third act was the point where Duse had most signally failed to please Paris on that memorable first night. She was by now wary of Bernhardt’s “friendship,” and said that while she was eager to appear in honor of Dumas, she would substitute the second act of La Femme de Claude. And on this substitution she insisted in spite of all Mme. Sarah could say.
The audience had anticipated a rare feast of acting and was not disappointed. It applauded both actresses to the echo. But notice how Sarah worked into this occasion an element that had reference not so much to the glorification of Dumas as to the glorification of herself: “The curtain rises to disclose the celebrated bust of Dumas, by Carpeaux, which occupies the center of the stage. Grouped about, at a respectful distance, are all the artists who have taken part in the performance, while in advance of all, face to face with the bust itself, stands Sarah Bernhardt. She still wears the costume of Marguérite Gauthier, and is there as the accepted symbol, the unrivaled personification of Dumas’ immortal creation. Duse is in the background along with the others.
“A poem has been composed especially for the occasion by Edmond Rostand, in which Bernhardt is allowed to address Dumas in a tone of familiar grandeur, as befits one genius in the presence of another. After one expressive pause, therefore, she changes her attitude and begins.
“‘She recites these exquisite verses [the account in the Gaulois said] with a charm of tenderness, an intensity of feeling, that arouse new transports of enthusiasm. The whole audience is on its feet, quivering, with arms outstretched toward the prodigious artiste, who makes an effort to bow, but is overcome by the force of her emotion. The curtain rises and falls an incalculable number of times, disclosing the great tragédienne in her gracious attitude of homage to the great dramatist. And then, with a movement of touching spontaneity, Sarah goes to La Duse, seizes her hand, and both incline before the bust of the master. The spectacle is one that will never be forgotten.’”[121]
How very Gallic! And how extremely effective as an apotheosis of Bernhardt! With Duse triumphantly subordinated by means of Bernhardt’s apparently magnanimous demonstrations of friendship, and with the Paris season practically at an end, Mme. Sarah left town and repaired to England.
In spite of all, Duse went on. In rapid succession she played La Locandiera, Sogno di un Mattino di Primavera (a new play by d’Annunzio), La Femme de Claude, and Cavalleria Rusticana.
A curious thing happened. Her great first-night audience Duse had not been able to overwhelm. Now, by the slow-working influence of her very genuine art, she gained a cumulative hold on the imagination and affection of the Paris public. An open letter to her, signed “Sganarelle,” appeared in Le Temps, appealing to her to give a final matinée especially for her brother and sister artists to whom “her methods had opened new horizons.” “Sganarelle” proved to be Sarcey. His project was taken up with an enthusiasm that told how effective, after all, had been Duse’s unobtrusive art. Lavrouniet, in Figaro, speaking of Bernhardt and Duse, in a few sentences admirably characterized the art of both. The former, he says, “from a constant desire to be unique, supplies all the highest and rarest expressions of art, except one—simplicity. In La Duse, we have seen on the stage a woman’s nature and that of an artiste completing each other—the artiste playing with all the sensitiveness of a woman, and the woman allowing herself to be entirely absorbed in the artiste.” Lemaître also wrote sympathetically: “She came to us, preceded by a European reputation a rival sister of the great Sarah. We were not deceived, for Duse is a dramatic artiste, original to the core, and of the first rank. We were told she was beyond everything an astonishing realist; that she lived her parts rather than played them, and in this way took her audience by storm. And that statement is doubtless exact.... What seems to me incontestably Mme. Duse’s is her singular charm and grace, her sweetness and tenderness. On that account her search for the truth, her solicitude to avoid the exhibition of any artifice, her realism, so very minute and so very sincere, reach even to poetry. Hers is the unique charm of a matured woman,—impassioned, bruised, suffering, nervous,—in whom, however, survives a young and ingenuous grace, almost that of a young girl, of a strange young girl.”
Duse promptly and gladly accepted the invitation to give the special matinée. Her lease of Bernhardt’s theatre had expired and it was necessary to write to England to ask the use of the house. Bernhardt tendered it gratuitously, but, wishing still to have a share in all that was going on, requested that the invitations bear her name and Duse’s side by side. Duse saw difficulties. “I could not invite my companions in France to come and admire me. That would be too presumptuous.” When Sarah could not have her way, she suggested that the performance be abandoned. Instead, the Porte St. Martin was secured. The newspapers got wind of the negotiations that Duse’s manager and Bernhardt had been carrying on by telegraph, and when the latter’s motives became apparent, there was another reaction in favor of Duse. There was room in the Porte St. Martin for only one-tenth of the applicants for seats, and, when the day arrived, the audience seemed to Sarcey “like a violin whose strings are tightened and ready to vibrate under the bow.” “It was the first time,” he wrote, “I have seen an audience thus formed and in such a frame of mind. There was no artificial commotion; it was expectation, full of security and joy.” Of what followed Jules Huret wrote in Figaro: “I am afraid of my incompetence to describe the powerful, the profound emotion of those three hours, where an entire audience composed of the flower of French comedians, of well-known writers, great painters and celebrated sculptors, honored a foreign artiste with the most vibrating, the most enthusiastic, the most poignant manifestation that it is possible to witness.”
Duse played for them Cavalleria Rusticana, the last act of La Dame aux Camélias, and the second act of La Femme de Claude. Never had she acted better. When the curtain fell “the whole audience rose to its feet, bravas and vivats thundered through the house, handkerchiefs and hats were waving, flowers flew from boxes,—‘Au revoir! Au revoir! Au revoir!’—and ten times the curtain had to be raised before the smiling actress, who did not attempt to conceal her joy. Then the stage was immediately invaded by the crowd. Some wished only to see her once again; some must embrace her; others asked for a flower from the bunch she held in her hand. During one whole hour the procession did not cease. I saw there young actresses and rising actors, with tears in their eyes, not daring to approach her. Coquelin wishes to act with her just once and begs her to play in French.... Mme. Laurent comes also, and slowly, with sober words, expresses her admiration. The Ambassador of Italy and his wife arrive in their turn, and congratulate her with happy faces. And her troupe, who leave to-day for Italy, wait to say good-by.... She kisses them, much moved.” Next day Duse was fêted by the Comédie Française. What a change was this in a few short weeks! The ending was a fine outburst, of a sort possible only to the Latin races, and it marked the very zenith of Duse’s career.
Such was Duse’s progress from a poverty-stricken, obscure childhood to a place, at the age of thirty-eight, equal, to say the least, that of any actress of her day.