I left the Odéon with very great regret, for I adored and still adore that theater. It always seems as though in itself it were a little provincial town. Its hospitable arcades, under which so many poor old savants take the air and are sheltered at the same time from the sun; the large flags all round, between the crevices of which microscopic yellow grass grows; its tall pillars, blackened by time, by hands, and by the dirt from the road; the uninterrupted noise going on all around, the departure of the omnibuses, like the departure of the old coaches; the fraternity of the people who meet there, everything, even to the very railings of the Luxembourg, give it a quite special aspect in the midst of Paris. Then, too, there is a kind of odor of the colleges there, the very walls are impregnated with youthful hopes. People are not always talking there of yesterday as they do in the other theaters. The young artistes who come there talk of to-morrow.
In short, my mind never goes back to those few years of my life without a childish emotion, without thinking of laughter and without a dilation of the nostrils, inhaling again the odor of little ordinary bouquets, clumsily tied up, bouquets which had all the freshness of flowers that grow in the open air, flowers that were the offerings of the hearts of twenty summers, little bouquets paid for out of the purses of students.
I would not take anything away with me from the Odéon. I left the furniture of my dressing-room to a young artiste. I left my costumes, all the little toilette knickknacks. I divided them and gave them away. I felt that my life of hopes and dreams was to cease there. I felt that the ground was now ready for the fruition of all the dreams, that life was about to commence, and I divined rightly.
My first experience at the Comédie Française had not been a success. I knew that I was going into the lion’s den. I counted few friends in this house, except Laroche, Coquelin, and Mounet-Sully; the two first my friends of the Conservatoire, and the latter of the Odéon. Among the women Marie Lloyd and Sophie Croizette, both friends of my childhood, the disagreeable Jouassain, who was nice only to me, and the adorable Mlle. Brohan, whose goodness delighted the soul, whose wit charmed the mind, and whose indifference rebuffed devotion.
M. Perrin decided that I should make my début in “Mademoiselle de Belle Isle,” according to Sarcey’s wish. The rehearsals began in the foyer, which troubled me very much. Mlle. Brohan was to play the part of the Marquise de Prie. At this time she was so fat as to be almost unsightly, while I was so thin that the composers of popular and comic verses took my meager proportions as their theme and the cartoonists as a subject for their albums. It was therefore impossible for the Duc de Richelieu to mistake the Marquise de Prie (Madeleine Brohan) for Mademoiselle de Belle Isle (Sarah Bernhardt) in the inconvenient and conclusive nocturnal rendezvous given by the Marquise to the Duc, who thinks he embraces the chaste Mademoiselle de Belle Isle.
At each rehearsal, Bressant, who took the part of the Duc de Richelieu, would stop, saying: “No, it is too ridiculous. I must play the Duc de Richelieu with both my arms cut off!” And Madeleine left the rehearsal to go to the director’s room, in order to try and get rid of the rôle.
This was exactly what Perrin wanted; he had from the earliest moment thought of Croizette, but he wanted to have his hand forced for private and underhand reasons which he knew and which others guessed.
At last the change took place, and the serious rehearsals commenced. Then the first performance was announced for November 6 (1872). I have always had, from the very beginning, and still have, a terrible fear, especially when I know that much is expected from me. And I knew a long time beforehand that the Salle had been let; I knew that the Press counted on a big success, and that Perrin himself was reckoning on a succession of good takings.
Alas! all these hopes and predictions went for nothing, and my débuts at the Comédie Française were only mediocre.