The members of the committee at last went to their places in the state box, and there was silence in the hall. The young men were called first on to the stage. There was no first prize awarded to them. Parfouru’s name was called for the second prize for comedy. Parfouru is known to-day as M. Paul Porel, director of the Vaudeville Theater, and Réjane’s husband. After this came the turn for the girls.
I was in the doorway, ready to rush up to the stage. The words “first prize for comedy” were uttered, and I made a step forward, pushing aside a girl who was a head taller than I was. “First prize for comedy awarded unanimously to Mlle. Marie Lloyd.” The tall girl I had pushed aside now went forward, slender and beaming, toward the stage.
There were a few muttered protests, but her beauty, her distinction, and her modest charm won the day with everyone, and Marie Lloyd was cheered. She passed me on her return, and kissed me affectionately. We were great friends, and I liked her very, much, but I considered her a nonentity as a pupil. I do not remember whether she had received any prize the previous year, but certainly no one expected her to have one now, and I was simply petrified.
“Second prize for comedy: Mlle. Bernhardt.”
I had not heard this, and was pushed forward by my companions. On reaching the stage I bowed, and all the time I could see hundreds of Marie Lloyds dancing before me. Some of them were making grimaces, others were throwing me kisses—some were fanning themselves and others bowing. They were very tall, all these Marie Lloyds—too tall for the ceiling, and they walked over the heads of all the people and came toward me, crushing me, stifling me, so that I could not breathe. My face, it seems, was whiter than my dress.
On returning to the green room, I sat down without uttering a word and looked at Marie Lloyd, who was being made much of, and who was greatly complimented by everyone. She was wearing a pale blue tarlatan dress, with a bunch of forget-me-nots in the bodice and another in her black hair. She was very tall, and her delicate, white shoulders emerged modestly from her dress, which was cut very low, as for her this did not matter. Her refined face, with its somewhat proud expression, was charming and very beautiful. Although very young, she had more womanly charm than all of us. Her large brown eyes had a certain play in them, her little round mouth gave a smile which was full of mischief, and the nostrils of her wonderfully cut nose dilated. The oval of her beautiful face was intercepted by two little pearly, transparent ears of the most exquisite shape. She had a long, flexible white neck, and the pose of her head was charming. It was a beauty prize that the jury had conscientiously awarded to Marie Lloyd. She had come on the stage gay and fascinating, in her rôle of Célimène, and in spite of the monotony of her delivery, the carelessness of her elocution, the impersonality of her acting, she had carried off all the votes because she was the very personification of Célimène, that coquette of twenty years of age who was unconsciously so cruel. She had realized for everyone the ideal dreamed of by Molière.
All these thoughts shaped themselves later on in my brain, and this first lesson, which was so painful at the time, was of great service to me in my career. I never forgot Marie Lloyd’s prize, and every time that I had to create a rôle, the physical body of the character always appeared before me dressed, with her hair done, walking, bowing, sitting down, getting up. But this was only a vision which lasted a second, for my mind always thought of the soul governing this personage. When listening to an author reading his work, I tried to define the intention of his idea, endeavoring to identify myself with that intention. I have never played an author false with regard to his idea, and I have always tried to represent the personage according to history, whenever it is a historical personage, and when it is an invention, according to the author.
I have sometimes tried to compel the public to return to the truth, and to destroy the legendary side of certain personages whom history, thanks to its documents, now represents to us as they were in reality; but the public never followed me. I soon realized that legend remains victorious in spite of history, and this is perhaps a good thing for the mind of the crowd. Jesus, Joan of Arc, Shakespeare, the Virgin Mary, Mahomet, and Napoleon I have all entered into legend.
It is impossible now for our brain to picture Jesus and the Virgin Mary accomplishing humiliating human functions. They lived the life that we are living. Death chilled their sacred limbs, and it is not without rebellion and grief that we accept this fact. We start off in pursuit of them in an ethereal heaven, in the infinite of our dreams. We cast down all the dross of humanity in order to let them, clothed in the ideal, be seated on a throne of love. We do not like Joan of Arc to be the rustic, bold, peasant woman, repulsing violently the old soldier who wants to joke with her, sitting astride her big steed like a man, laughing readily at the coarse jokes of the soldiers, submitting to the lewd promiscuities of the barbarous epoch in which she lived, and having, on that account, all the more merit in remaining a most heroic maiden.
We do not care for such useless truths. In the legend she is a fragile woman guided by a divine soul. Her girl’s arm which holds the heavy banner is sustained by an invisible angel. In her childish eyes there is something from another world, and it is from this that all the warriors get their strength and courage. It is thus that we wish it to be, and so the legend remains triumphant.