r four months every year she
earned a further annual income of thirty thousand francs. She met with
extraordinary success upon her provincial tours; enormous profits
resulted from her repeated visits to Holland and Belgium, Germany,
Russia, and England. But, from first to last, Rachel's connection with
the Francais was an incessant quarrel. She was capricious, ungrateful,
unscrupulous, extortionate. She struggled to evade her duties, to do
as little as she possibly could in return for the large sums she
received from the committee. She pretended to be too ill to play in
Paris, the while she was always well enough to hurry away and obtain
great rewards by her performances in the provinces. She wore herself
out by her endless wanderings hither and thither, her continuous
efforts upon the scene. She denied herself all rest, or slept in a
travelling carriage to save time in her passage from one country
theatre to another. Her company complained that they fell asleep as
they acted, her engagements denying them proper opportunities of
repose. The newspapers at one time set forth the acrimonious letters
she had interchanged with the committee of the Francais. Finally she
tended her resignation of the position she occupied as _societaire_;
the committee took legal proceedings to compel her to return to her
duties; some concessions were made on either side, however, and a
reconciliation was patched up.

The new tragedies, "Judith" and "Cleopatre," written for the actress
by Madame de Girardin, failed to please, nor did success attend the
production of M. Romand's "Catherine II.," M. Soumet's "Jeanne d'Arc,"
in which, to the indignation of the critics, the heroine was seen at
last surrounded by real flames! or "Le Vieux de la Montagne" of M.
Latour de St. Ybars. With better fortune Rachel appeared in the same
author's "Virginie," and in the "Lucrece" of Ponsard. Voltaire's
"Oreste" was revived for her in 1845 that she might play Electre. She
personated Racine's "Athalie" in 1847, assuming long white locks,
painting furrows on her face, and disguising herself beyond
recognition, in her determination to seem completely the character she
had undertaken. In 1848 she played Agrippine in the "Britannicus" of
Racine, and dressed in plain white muslin, and clasping the
tri-colored flag to her heart, she delivered the "Marseillaise" to
please the Revolutionists, lending the air strange meaning and passion
by the intensity of her manner,