ile palpable to the
public eye. On one night she would thrill an audience with horror, and
in the power of her delineations make the very sternest natures yield to
terror. At another, she would shock the public by some indifference to
the exigencies of the scene, walk through her part in listless apathy,
and receive with calm unconcern the ill-disguised disapproval of the
spectators. At such times praise or blame were alike to her; she seemed
like one laboring under some pressure of thought too engrossing to admit
of any attention to passing objects; and in this dreary pre-occupation
she moved like one spell-bound and entranced.

To allude to these passing states of mind after they had occurred was
sure to give her deep offence; and although for a while I dared to do
this, yet I saw reason to abandon the attempt, and maintain silence like
the rest. The press, with less delicacy, expressed severe censure on
what they characterized as an insulting appreciation of the public,
and boldly declared that the voices which had made could still unmake a
reputation, and that the lesson of contempt might soon pass from behind
the footlights to the space before them.

It was both my province to keep these criticisms from her eye, and to
answer them in print; and for a while I succeeded. I wrote, I argued, I
declaimed,--now casuisti-cally expressing praise of what in my heart I
condemned; now seeming to discover a hidden meaning where none existed.
I even condescended to appeal to the indulgence of the public in favor
of those whose efforts were not always under their own control, and
whose passing frames of sorrow or sickness must incapacitate them at
seasons from embodying their own great conceptions. So sensitive had
she become on the subject of remark that the slightest allusion to her
health was now resented as an offence, and even Mademoiselle Mars dared
not to say that she looked paler or thinner, or in better or worse
spirits,--so certain would any allusion of the kind be to displease her.

This irritability gradually widened and extended itself to everything.
The slightest sign of inattention of the audience--any movement in the
house while she was acting--a want of ability in those _en scene_ with
her--an accidental error in even their costume--gave umbrage; and she
would stop in her part, and only by an effort seem able to recover
herself and continue. These evidences of indifference to public
opinion--for so were they c