In America I had often danced on important stages during the intervals between operatic acts, and I fancied that it would be the same in Paris.
Accordingly upon my arrival, which occurred in October, 1892, even before going to my room at the Grand Hotel, I instructed my agent, Mr. Marten Stein, to call upon M. Gailhard, manager of the National Academy of Music and Dancing, to whom I had written from Germany to propose my dancing at his theatre.
National Academy of Dancing!
I still believed, in my simple soul, in names. I fancied that an institution of this sort ought to be receptive of innovations in dancing.
My illusion, alas! was to be short-lived. Mr. Stein returned looking very downcast. He had been received by M. Pedro Gailhard, but that gentleman, in the deep voice which he has skilfully developed and which for twenty-one years has awakened the echoes of the directors’ office at the Opera, did not conceal from him the fact that he had no great desire to engage me.
“Let her show me her dances if she cares to,” he said, “but all I can do, in case these dances please me, would be, on condition of her performing nowhere else, to guarantee her a maximum of four performances a month.”
“Four performances? That is hardly enough,” my agent ventured to remark.
“It is too many for a dancer who before coming to Paris already has imitators here.”
Influenced by the voice and bearing of a man who had formerly played the part of Mephistopheles on the stage which he now directed, Mr. Stein did not dare to make further inquiries.
The impression made upon me by the terms that my agent brought back is easily imagined. To accept four appearances a month, even if M. Gailhard actually made a proposition to that effect, was not to be thought of. That, from a pecuniary standpoint, was altogether insufficient. I thought the matter over. My mind was quickly made up. After dinner I bundled my agent and my mother into a carriage and gave the driver the address of the Folies-Bergère, for I knew that my agent, on his own responsibility, had written to the manager of this big music hall. On the way I explained to Mr. Stein that I was governing myself by the advice that he had given me sometime before, and that I was going to ask the manager of the Folies-Bergère for an engagement.