“I will go and ask Mme. Nathalie to come here,” he said, “and I beg you will do your part as quickly as possible, for I have other things to attend to than to put your blunders right.”
“Oh, no, do not fetch Mme. Nathalie,” I said at last, “I shall not apologize to her. I will leave. I will cancel my engagement at once.”
He was stupefied, and his arrogance melted away in pity for the ungovernable, willful child who was about to ruin her whole future for the sake of a question of self-esteem. He was at once gentler and more polite. He asked me to sit down, which he had not hitherto done, and he sat down himself opposite to me and spoke to me gently about the advantages of the Comédie, and of the danger that there would be for me in leaving that illustrious theater which had done me the honor of admitting me. He gave me a hundred other very good, wise reasons which softened me. When he saw the effect he had made, he wanted to send for Mme. Nathalie, but I roused up then like a little wild animal.
“Oh, don’t let her come here, I should slap her again!” I exclaimed.
“Well, then, I must ask your mother to come,” he said.
“My mother would never come,” I replied.
“Then I will go and call on her.”
“It will be quite useless,” I persisted, “my mother has given me my liberty, and I am quite free to lead my own life. I alone am responsible for all that I do.”
“Well, then, mademoiselle, I will think it over,” he said rising to show me that the interview was at an end. I went back home determined to say nothing to my mother, but my little sister when questioned about her wound had told everything in her own way, exaggerating, if possible, the brutality of Mme. Nathalie and the audacity of what I had done. Rosa Baretta, too, had been to see me and had burst into tears, assuring my mother that my engagement would be canceled. The whole family was very much excited and distressed when I arrived, and when they began to argue with me it made me still more nervous. I did not take calmly the reproaches which one and another of them addressed to me, and I was not at all willing to follow their advice. I went to my room and locked myself in.
The following day no one spoke to me and I went up to Mme. Guérard to be comforted and consoled.