Il dit en galopant sur le front de bandière:
‘Soldats, il faut finir par un coup de tonnerre!’
Il va, tachant de gris l’état-major vermeil;
L’armée est une mer; il attend le soleil;
Il le voit se lever du haut d’un promontoire;
Et, d’un sourire, il met ce soleil dans l’histoire!”[8]
she carried them off with a pace and an intensity that went through the large theatre like an electric shock. People were crying everywhere in the audience, and I remember Reggie Lister saying to me in the entr’acte that what moved him at a play or in a book was hardly ever the pathetic, but when people did or said splendid things.
The rest of the play, from that moment until the end, was a triumphant progression of cunningly administered electric thrills which were deliriously received by a quivering audience.
When it was all over and people talked of it the next and the following days in drawing-rooms and in the press, the enthusiasm began to cool down.
The following extracts from an article which I wrote in the Speaker about it, immediately after the performance, give an idea of the impression the play made at the time: