J’oublie en le voyant....”
That word j’oublie struck me with a new idea. What if I did forget the words I had to say? Why, yes.... What was it I had to say? I did not know.... I could not remember.... What was I to say after en le voyant...?
No one answered me. Everyone was alarmed at my nervous state. I heard Got mumble, “She’s going mad!” Mlle. Thénard, who was playing Œnone, my old nurse, said to me: “Calm yourself, all the English have gone to Paris, there’s no one in the house but Belgians.”
This foolishly comic speech turned my thoughts in another direction. “How stupid you are!” I said. “You know how frightened I was at Brussels!”
“Oh, all for nothing!” she answered calmly. “There were only English people in the theater that day.”
I had to go on the stage at once, and I could not even answer her, but she had changed the current of my ideas. I still had stage fright, but not the fright that paralyzes, only the kind that drives one wild. This is bad enough, but it is preferable to the other sort. It makes one do too much, but at any rate, one does something.
The whole house had applauded my arrival on the stage for a few seconds, and as I bent my head in acknowledgment, I said within myself: “Yes ... yes ... you shall see. I’m going to give you my very blood ... my life itself ... my soul....”
When I began my part, as I had lost my self-possession, I started on rather too high a note, and when once in full swing I could not get lower again, I simply could not stop. I suffered, I wept, I implored, I cried out, and it was all real. My suffering was horrible, my tears were flowing—scorching and bitter. I implored Hippolyte for the love which was killing me, and my arms stretched out to Mounet-Sully were the arms of Phèdre writhing in the cruel longing for his embrace.... God was within me——
When the curtain fell, Mounet-Sully lifted me up inanimate and carried me to my dressing-room.
The public, unaware of what was happening, wanted me to appear again and bow. I, too, wanted to return and thank the public for its attention, its kindliness, and its emotion.