He was as gallant a man as he was a good soldier. He gave way and seemed to become aware of the situation again. “Good!;” he said, helping me to mount once more. “When I have taken you back to your hotel, I will come back with some men to pick up this wretch.” Half an hour later we were back home, without having exchanged another word during our ride.
I kept up my friendship with O’Connor, but I could never see him again without thinking of that scene. Suddenly, when he was talking to me, the brutelike mask, under which I had seen him for a second, would fix itself again over his laughing face. Quite recently, in March, 1905, General O’Connor, who was commanding in Algeria, came to see me one evening in my dressing-room at the theater. He told me about his difficulties with some of the great Arab chiefs.
“I fancy,” he said, laughing, “that we shall have to have a brush together.”
The captain’s mask, for me, then fixed itself on the general’s face. I never saw him again, for he died six months afterwards.
We were at last able to go back to Paris. The abominable and shameful peace had been signed, the wretched Commune crushed. Everything was supposed to be in order again. But what blood and ashes! what women in mourning! what ruins!
The bitter odor of smoke was what we inhaled in Paris. All that I touched at home left on my fingers a somewhat greasy and almost imperceptible color. A general uneasiness beset France, and more especially Paris. The theaters, however, opened their doors once more, and that was a general relief.
One morning I received from the Odéon a notice of rehearsal. I shook out my hair, stamped my feet, and sniffed the air like a young horse snorting. The race ground was to be opened for us again. We should be able to gallop afresh through our dreams. The lists were open. The contest was beginning. Life was commencing again. It is truly strange that man’s mind should have made of life a perpetual strife. When there is no longer War there is Battle, for there are a hundred thousand of us for the same object, God has created the earth and man for each other. The earth is vast. What ground there is uncultivated! Miles upon miles, acres upon acres of new land, waiting for arms that will take from its bosom the treasures of inexhaustible nature. And we remain grouped round each other; crowds of famishing people watching other groups, which are also lying in wait.
The Odéon opened its doors to the public, offering them its repertory. Some new pieces were given us to study. One of these, more particularly, had great success. It was André Theuriet’s “Jean-Marie,” and was given in October, 1871. This little one-act play is a veritable masterpiece, and it took its author straight to the Academy. Porel, who played the part of Jean-Marie, had huge success. He was at that time slender, nimble, and full of youthful ardor. He needed a little more poetry, but the joyous laughter of his thirty-two teeth made up in ardor for what was wanting in poetic desire. It was very good, anyhow.
My rôle of the young Breton girl, submissive to the elderly husband forced upon her, and living eternally with the memory of the fiancé who was absent, perhaps dead, was pretty, poetical, and touching through the final sacrifice. There was even a certain grandeur in the end of the piece. It had, I must repeat, an immense success and increased my growing reputation.
I was, however, awaiting the event which was to consecrate me a star. I did not quite know what I was expecting, but I knew that my Messiah had to come. And it was the greatest poet of the last century who was to place on my head the crown of the Elect.