grateful for her kindness, I was filled with great admiration for her.  She was a wee thing—­like a toy, and her dancing was really exquisite.  When I watched the way she moved her hands and feet, despair entered my soul.  It was all so precise, so “express and admirable.”  Her limbs were so dainty and graceful—­mine so big and unmanageable!  “How long and gaunt I am,” I used to say to myself, “and what a pattern of prim prettiness she is!” I was so much ashamed of my large hands, during this time at the Royalty, that I kept them tucked up under my arms!  This subjected me to unmerciful criticism from Madame Albina at rehearsals.

“Take down your hands,” she would call out. “Mon Dieu! It is like an ugly young poulet going to roost!”

In spite of this, I did not lose my elegant habit for many years!  I was only broken of it at last by a friend saying that he supposed I had very ugly hands, as I never showed them!  That did it!  Out came the hands to prove that they were not so very ugly, after all!  Vanity often succeeds where remonstrance fails.

The greenroom at the Royalty was a very pretty little place, and Madame Albina sometimes had supper-parties there after the play.  One night I could not resist the pangs of curiosity, and I peeped through the keyhole to see what was going on!  I chose a lucky moment!  One of Madame’s admirers was drinking champagne out of her slipper!  It was even worth the box on the ear that mother gave me when she caught me.  She had been looking all over the theater for me, to take me home.

My first part at the Royalty was Clementine in “Attar Gull.”  Of the play, adapted from a story by Eugene Sue, I have a very hazy recollection, but I know that I had one very effective scene in it.  Clementine, an ordinary fair-haired ingenue in white muslin, has a great horror of snakes, and, in order to cure her of her disgust, some one suggests that a dead snake should be put in her room, and she be taught how harmless the thing is for which she had such an aversion.  An Indian servant, who, for some reason or other, has a deadly hatred for the whole family, substitutes a live reptile.  Clementine appears at the window with the venomous creature coiled round her neck, screaming with wild terror.  The spectators on the stage think that the snake is dead, and that she is only screaming from “nerves,” but in reality she is being slowly strangled.  I began screaming in a frantic, heartrending manner, and continued screaming, each cry surpassing the last in intensity and agony.  At rehearsal I could not get these screams right for a long time.  Madame de Rhona grew more and more impatient and at last flew at me like a wild-cat and shook me.  I cried, just as I had done when I could not get Prince Arthur’s terror right, and then the wild, agonized scream that Madame de Rhona wanted came to me.  I reproduced it and enlarged it in effect.  On the first night the audience applauded the screaming more than anything in the play.  Madame de Rhona assured me that I had made a sensation, kissed me and said I was a genius!  How sweet and pleasant her flattering words sounded in my young and inexperienced ears I need hardly say.