Then he showed the petrified wood and spoke of it, with some difference of expression, much as he had spoken the first time in my presence. Finally he begged his visitor to call upon him every time he came to Paris. As we went away I was obliged to promise to visit him again soon. But, when I had leisure to do so, M. Groult was already too ill to receive me and I never saw him again.
I am glad to have known him, for he was an extraordinary man.
XIII
MY DANCES AND THE CHILDREN
CHILDREN brought up on fairy tales and stories of adventure, have an imagination that is easily kindled by suggestions of the supernatural. From the unearthly appearance of my dances, caused by the light and the mingling of colours, they ought particularly to appeal to the young, making them believe that the being flitting about there before them among the shadows and flashes of light belongs to the unreal world which holds sway in their lives.
You can hardly conceive of the genuine enthusiasm I have aroused, or, to express it more exactly, since my personality counts for nothing, of the enthusiasm my dancing has aroused amongst children. I have only to go back in memory to see enraptured groups of children, caught under the spell of my art. I even have literary testimony to this effect, since I find among my papers this note, signed by one of my friends, M. Auguste Masure:
“Dear Miss Loie: We have formed a plan of taking the children to see you at a matinee next week. Our third, the youngest, is a little boy whom you have never seen. He looks at all your lithographs and always asks to have them explained. He is only three and a half, but his brother and sister have so filled his head with Loie Fuller that when he sees you it will be worth while observing what he has to say.”
If I cite this circumstance it is, let me repeat, because written testimony is involved—testimony that proves clearly the profound impression my dances make on children. Here was a little one, three and a half years old, who was possessed of a desire to see me simply through having heard my praises sung—in what language one may conjecture—by two other children.
Here is a story that if not more convincing is more characteristic.
One afternoon the daughter of an architect, very well known in Paris, had brought her little girl to a matinee in the course of which I came on. The child, I was told, seemed fascinated and dazed. She did not say a word, did not make the slightest noise, hardly dared to stir. I seemed to have hypnotised her.
At the end of the performance the young mother, whom I knew very well, said to the little girl: