the management of M. Houssaye, tear up her resignation and re-enter the Théâtre Français. However, as she had had rather severe charges brought against her by M. Marie in the name of her dear comrades, she felt obliged to repel them. On the 29th of November M. Delangle undertook this difficult defence and certainly made up in skill and brilliant oratory what he lacked in good

reasons.

The pleading of M. Delangle was of course directly the opposite of M. Marie's. According to him, all the tragédienne's conduct had been a continual series of proofs of devotion, zeal, labor, dinterestedness and abnegation. If she had spoken of resigning in 1846 it was because she was ill, seriously ill. She might have been desirous in 1847 of a change in the management of the company without being at all hostile to it. That management was financially so defective that the company would have inevitably been ruined had not an energetic remedy been applied to the evil. In 1848, during the revolution, Mademoiselle Rachel had given proofs of the most admirable devotion to the interests of the committee. Her zeal knew no limits. M. Delangle presented this zeal under colors that certainly astonished the public and probably his very client.

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Every day," said the eloquent advocate, "Mademoiselle Rachel, regardless of her ill health, was on the boards. Yes! every day she con

demned herself to the 'Marseillaise!' Yes! every evening she sang this Marseillaise' to the pit! Well, it could not be helped, and by that means the theatre and the treasury were filled, and the sociétaires testified their gratitude to Mademoiselle Rachel in the most flattering letter. Since then their language has changed. She had a right to her congé and she took it. On her return to Paris she was deeply wounded by the dismissal of M. Lockroy and resumed the project of retreat which had suggested itself to her mind in 1846."

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After discussing the different points in debate with regard to the damages claimed, he says: the total of the performances of Mademoiselle Rachel, from the time of her début to the present day, have produced to the Théâtre Français the sum of 2,478,482ls. 12. As to the demand of damages that was laid aside when the suit was dropped in 1848, the committee had admitted Mademoiselle Rachel's plea of ill-health. The salary kept back had been paid, and even the arrears, and with the added courtesy of sending the amount to her house.

Notwithstanding a sharp and witty reply from M. Marie, the decision of the tribunal was in conformity with M. Delangle's pleadings, that is, the resignation was pronounced to be legal, and that there was no case for damages, the committee having admitted the plea of illness and payed the

arrears.

Mademoiselle Rachel did not gain her suit at the bar of public opinion, though she had been so successful at the Tribunal Civil of the Seine. The facts that had come to light in the course of the suit revealed principles which, though not reprehensible in the eye of the law, conveyed a very unfavourable impression of the tragédienne as an artist and in her social relations with her fellow-players. The old amateurs, partisans of the free company of the Théâtre Français contrasted her selfish and aggressive behaviour with the amiable and conciliating temper of Talma, the constant and laborious devotion of Mademoiselle Mars, even to the close of her long and noble career.

On leaving the Court House, Mademoiselle Rachel hastened to confirm her alliance with M. Arsène Houssaye: she did not, however, shew much submission to the chief she condescended to acknowledge, for she spent the remainder of the

VOL. II.

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year at home-probably with a view to prove her assertion that she needed rest-and did not make her re-appearance until the beginning of the year 1850.

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CHAPTER IV.

1850.

Resumé "Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle 66 Angelo "—" Horace et Lydie"-Congé of Four Months spent almost Entirely in Germany-The Peasant Aunt-Mother and Daughter.

So far Mademoiselle Rachel had passed over two-thirds of her dramatic career. The first five years, from 1840 to 1845, were spent in study, in laborious endeavors to reach the place for which nature had designed her at times encouraged and sustained, at others capriciously censured or judiciously rebuked by criticism. During the last period, from 1845 to 1850, we have seen her at the apogée of her talent. In the third, which remains to be narrated, fortune, not fame, seems to be the only end pursued by the tragédienne; the second being valued but as a means of increasing the first. We do not find her employing