I then went to the hotel to show the landlady that she was mistaken. She then made me look at the photograph of a woman who imitates everything that I do, passes her life watching over each one of my creations and follows me everywhere, whether to London, to New York, to Paris or Berlin.
In addition to these rare adventures that come to my knowledge, how many others are there that I shall never know about?
I never arrive in a town without Loie Fuller’s having been there in advance of me, and even in Paris I have seen announced in flamboyant letters, “Loie Fuller, radiant dances,” and I have been able to see with my own eyes “la Loie Fuller” dance before my face.
When I went to South America I discovered that there, too, Loie Fuller had been ahead of me.
What I often wonder is what “imitations” in private life are perpetrated by these ladies, who are embarrassed by no scruples.
So I am not the woman, perhaps my word will be taken for it, who, of all the world, is most appreciative of the value of a name. I might add that the American chorus girl of whom I have been writing came to Paris and that one day her lover left her there. Alone, without friends, without a cent, ill, she sent for me.
Did I help her?
I am afraid I did. When we see a dog in the street dying of hunger, we give him something to eat, and not in order that he may not bite us, not in order that he may be grateful to us; we give him something to eat because he is hungry.
XXIV
HOW M. CLARETIE INDUCED ME TO WRITE THIS BOOK
ONE evening during the Exposition of 1900 M. and Mme. Jules Claretie came to my little theatre in the Rue de Paris, to see Sada Yacco in her famous death-scene. After the performance they came behind the scenes, where I was presented to them.