“Well, Mademoiselle?” said M. Thierry curtly.
I looked at him without speaking, and he began to get impatient.
“I will go and ask Madame 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 Madame Nathalie,” I said at last. “I shall not apologise 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, wilful 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 theatre, which had done me the honour 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 Madame Nathalie, but I roused up then like a little wild animal.
“Oh, don’t let her come here; I should box her ears again!” I exclaimed.
“Well then, I must ask your mother to come,” he said.
“My mother would never come,” I said.
“Then I will go and call on her,” he remarked.
“It will be quite useless,” I persisted. “My mother has emancipated me, and I am quite free to lead my own life. I alone am responsible for all that I do.”