It was under these conditions that I prepared for the second act of Phèdre, in which I was to appear for the first time before the English public. Three times over I put rouge on my cheeks, blackened my eyes, and three times over I took it all off again with a sponge. I thought I looked ugly, and it seemed to me I was thinner than ever and not so tall. I closed my eyes to listen to my voice. My special pitch is “le bal,” which I pronounce low down with the open a, “le bâââl,” or take high by dwelling on the l—“le balll.” Ah, but there was no doubt about it; my “le bal” neither sounded high nor low, my voice was hoarse in the low notes and not clear in the soprano. I cried with rage, and just then I was informed that the second act of Phèdre was about to commence. This drove me wild. I had not my veil on, nor my rings, and my cameo belt was not fastened.
I began to murmur:
“Le voici! Vers mon cœur tout mon sang se retire.
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. Every one 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 theatre that day.”