I had begged Perrin to give me a month’s holiday, but he refused energetically, and compelled me to take part in the rehearsal of “Zaïre,” during the trying months of June and July, and in spite of my reluctance, announced the first performance for the 6th of August. That year it was fearfully hot in Paris. I believe that Perrin, who could not tame me alive, had, without really any bad intention, but by pure autocracy, the desire to tame me dead. Doctor Parrot went to see him and told him that my state of weakness was such that it would be positively dangerous for me to act during the trying heat. Perrin would hear nothing of it. Then, furious at the obstinacy of this intellectual bourgeois, I swore I would play on to the death.
Often, when I was a child, I wished to kill myself in order to vex others. I remember once having swallowed the contents of a large ink pot after being compelled by mamma to swallow a “panade”[[2]] because she imagined that panades were good for the health. Our nurse had told her my dislike to this form of nourishment, adding that every morning I emptied the panade into the slop pail. I had, of course, a very bad stomach ache, and screamed out in pain. I cried to mamma: “It is you who have killed me”—and my poor mother wept. She never knew the truth, but they never again made me swallow anything against my will.
[2]. Bread stewed a long time in water and flavored with a little butter and sugar; a kind of “sops” given to children in France.
Well, after so many years had gone over my head, I experienced the same bitter and childish sentiment. “I don’t care,” I said, “I shall certainly fall senseless, vomiting blood, and perhaps I shall die! And it will serve Perrin right. He will be furious!” Yes, that is what I thought. I am, at times, very foolish. Why? I don’t know how to explain it, but I admit it.
The 6th of August, therefore, I played, in tropical heat, the part of Zaïre. The entire audience was bathed in perspiration. I saw the spectators through a mist. The piece, badly staged as regards scenery, but very well presented as regards costumes, was particularly well played by Mounet-Sully, Orosmane, Laroche, Nerestan, and myself—Zaïre—and obtained an immense success.
I was determined to faint, determined to vomit blood, determined to die, in order to enrage Perrin. I gave myself entirely up to it. I had sobbed, I had loved, I had suffered, and I had been stabbed by the poignard of Orosmane, uttering a true cry of suffering, for I had felt the steel penetrate my breast; then falling panting, dying, on the Oriental divan, I had meant to die in reality, and dared scarcely move my arms, convinced as I was that I was in my death agony and somewhat afraid, I must admit, at having succeeded in playing such a nasty trick on Perrin. But my surprise was great when the curtain fell at the close of the piece, and I got up quickly to answer to the call and salute the public without languor, without fainting, ready to recommence the piece.
And I marked this performance with a little white stone—for that day I learned that my vital force was at the service of my intellect. I had desired to follow the impulse of my brain, whose conceptions seemed to me to be too forceful for my physical strength to carry out and I found myself, having given out all of which I was capable—and more—in perfect equilibrium.
Then I saw the possibility of the longed-for future.
I had fancied, and up to this performance of Zaïre I had always heard, and read in the papers that my voice was pretty, but weak; that my gestures were gracious, but vague; that my supple movements lacked authority, and that my glance lost in heavenward contemplation, could not tame the lion (the public). I thought then of all that. I had received proof that I could count on my physical strength, for I had commenced the performance of Zaïre in such a state of weakness that it was easy to predict that I should not finish the first act without fainting.
On the other hand, although the rôle was easy, it required two or three shrieks which might have provoked the vomiting of blood which frequently troubled me at that time. That evening, therefore, I acquired the certainty that I could count on the strength of my vocal cords, for I had uttered my shrieks with real rage and suffering, hoping to break something in my wild desire to be revenged on Perrin.