night great artists who every time present the exact counterpart
of what they were on the preceding one.

It was at the Theatre Francais that she won her final acceptance
as the greatest of all tragedians of her time. This was in her
appearance in Corneille's famous play of "Horace." She had now, in
1838, blazed forth with a power that shook her no, less than it
stirred the emotions and the passions of her hearers. The princes
of the royal blood came in succession to see her. King Louis
Philippe himself was at last tempted by curiosity to be present.
Gifts of money and jewels were showered on her, and through sheer
natural genius rather than through artifice she was able to master
a great audience and bend it to her will.

She had no easy life, this girl of eighteen years, for other
actresses carped at her, and she had had but little training. The
sordid ways of her old father excited a bitterness which was
vented on the daughter. She was still under age, and therefore was
treated as a gold-mine by her exacting parents. At the most she
could play but twice a week. Her form was frail and reed-like. She
was threatened with a complaint of the lungs; yet all this served
to excite rather than to diminish public interest in her. The
newspapers published daily bulletins of her health, and her door
was besieged by anxious callers who wished to know her condition.
As for the greed of her parents, every one said she was not to
blame for that. And so she passed from poverty to riches, from
squalor to something like splendor, and from obscurity to fame.

Much has been written about her that is quite incorrect. She has
been credited with virtues which she never possessed; and, indeed,