more fiercely; the breast heaves; the hand clinches; the cheek burns,
until, suddenly, in the very moment of despair, having as yet spoken
no word, she comes to the table, sees the candle, which still smokes,
and drawing herself up with fearful calmness, her cheeks grow pallid,
the lips livid, the hands relax, the eye deadens as with a blow, and,
with the despairing conviction that she is betrayed, her heart-break
sighs itself out in a cold whisper, "_Elle fume encore_".

In this she is as purely dramatic as in other plays she is classical.
But neither in the one nor the other is there a look, or a gesture, or
a word, which is not harmonious with the spirit of the style and the
character of the person represented.

This is pure passion as the other is implacable fate. There is
something so tearfully human in it that you are touched as by a
picture of the Magdalen. Every representation of Rachel is preserved
in your memory with the first sights of the great statues and the
famous pictures.

In the French translation of Schiller's "Mary Stuart", a character
which may be supposed especially to interest Americans and English,
Rachel is not less excellent. The sad grace, the tender resignation,
the poetic enthusiasm, the petulant caprice, the wilful, lovely
womanliness of the lovely queen, are made tragically real by her
representation. Perhaps it is not the Mary of Mignet nor of history.
But Mary Queen of Scots is one of the characters which the imagination
has chosen to take from history and decorate with immortal grace. It
cares less for what the woman Mary was, than to have a figure standing
upon the fact of history, but radiant with the beauty of poetry. It
has invested her with a loveliness that is perhaps unreal, with a