“Won’t you please return to the hall, and pretend to take the electric treatment again in order that the archduchesses, who are there, with a whole crowd of court ladies, may see you?”
I replied: “Tell the archduchesses that they can see me this evening at the theatre.”
The poor woman then declared to me that she had been forbidden to mention their Royal Highnesses, and that they had bidden her get me back into the hall on some pretext or other.
She was so grieved at not having succeeded that I returned to the machines, and had my back massaged, in order that the noble company might look at me at their ease, as they would survey an interesting animal.
They looked at me, all of them, smiling, and while they viewed me I never turned my eyes away from them.
The odd thing was that they did not know that I knew them. I was, therefore, as much amused by them, and without their perceiving it, as they were amused by me.
How I was not decorated with the Order of the Lion and the Sun of Persia.
During one of the visits that the Shah of Persia pays to Paris, the Marquis and Marquise d’Oyley, who were great friends of the Sovereign and who were very fond of my dancing, brought the Shah to one of my performances at Marigny.
After my appearance on the stage the Marquis and Marquise, accompanied by some dignitaries of the sovereign’s retinue, came to my dressing-room and brought me a Persian flag, which they begged me to use in one of my dances.
What could I do with that heavy flag? In vain I racked my brain. I could not discover any way. I could not refuse, and I was unable on the other hand to convince them that it was impossible to try anything so impromptu without running the risk of a failure.