For Rachel has never sought to ally her genius to goodness, and has
rather despised than courted the aid of noble character. Not a lady by
birth or breeding, she is reported to have surpassed Messalina in
debauchery and Semiramis in luxury. Paris teems with tales of her
private life, which, while they are undoubtedly exaggerated, yet serve
to show the kind of impression her career has produced. Those modern
Sybarites, the princes and nobles of Russia, are the heroes of her
private romances; and her sumptuous apartments, if not a Tour de
Nesle, are at least a bower of Rosamond.

As if to show the independent superiority of her art, she has been
willing to appear, or she really is, avaricious, mean, jealous,
passionate, false; and then, by her prodigious power, she has swayed
the public that so judged her as the wind tosses a leaf. There has,
alas, been disdain in her superiority. Perhaps Paris has found
something fascinating in her very contempt, as in the _Memoires du
Diable_ the heroine confesses that she loved the ferocity of her
lover. Nor is it a traditional fame that she has enjoyed; but whenever
Rachel plays, the theatre is crowded, and the terror and the tears are
what they were when she began.

Rachel is the greatest of merely dramatic artists. Others are more
beautiful; others are more stately and imposing; others have been
fitted by external gifts of nature to personify characters of very
marked features; others are more graceful and lovely and winning; most
others mingle their own personality with the characters they assume,
but Rachel has this final evidence of genius, that she is always
superior to what she does; her mind presides over her own
performances. It is the perfection of art. In describing this peculiar