Gailhard had come to call on me in May when I was so ill and had made me promise to be present in his box at the hundredth performance which he more than hoped to give and which as a matter of fact took place in October. That day I yielded to his invitation.
Mlle. Lucienne Bréval and Mm. Saléza and Frédéric Delmas were applauded with delirious enthusiasm on the night of the hundredth performance. At the recall at the end of the third act, Gailhard, in spite of my resistance, pushed me to the front of his box....
It is easy to imagine what happened on the stage, in the Opéra's superb orchestra, and in the audience packed to the roof.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN THE MIDST OF THE MIDDLE AGES
I became very ill at Paris. I felt that the path from life to death was so easy, the way seemed so gentle, so restful, that I was sorry to find myself back in the harsh, cutting troubles of life.
I had escaped the sharp cold of winter; it was now spring, and I went to my old home at Égreville to find nature, the great consoler, in her solitude and peace.
I brought with me a voluminous correspondence, letters, pamphlets and rolls of manuscript which I had never opened. I intended doing so on the way as a distraction from the boredom of the journey. I had opened several letters and was about to unroll a manuscript, "Oh, no," I said, "that's enough." As a matter of fact I had happened on a work for the stage.
Must the stage follow me everywhere, I thought. I longed to have nothing more to do with it. So I put the importunate thing aside. Yet as I journeyed along, to kill time, as they say, I took it up again and settled myself to run through that famous manuscript notwithstanding whatever desire I may have had to the contrary.
My attention was at first superficial and inattentive, but gradually it became fixed. Insensibly I began to read with interest; so much so that I ended by feeling real surprise—I must confess that it even became stupefaction.
"What," I exclaimed, "a play without a part for a woman except for the speechless apparition of the Virgin!"