n how she could be
personally very fascinating.

In all Rachel's career one can detect just a single strand of real
romance. It is one that makes us sorry for her, because it tells us
that her love was given where it never could be openly requited.

During the reign of Louis Philippe the Comte Alexandre Walewski held
many posts in the government. He was a son of the great Napoleon. His
mother was that Polish countess who had accepted Napoleon's love
because she hoped that he might set Poland free at her desire. But
Napoleon was never swerved from his well-calculated plans by the wish
of any woman, and after a time the Countess Walewska came to love him
for himself. It was she to whom he confided secrets which he would not
reveal to his own brothers. It was she who followed him to Elba in
disguise. It was her son who was Napoleon's son, and who afterward,
under the Second Empire, was made minister of fine arts, minister of
foreign affairs, and, finally, an imperial duke. Unlike the third
Napoleon's natural half-brother, the Duc de Moray, Walewski was a
gentleman of honor and fine feeling. He never used his relationship to
secure advantages for himself. He tried to live in a manner worthy of
the great warrior who was his father.

As minister of fine arts he had much to do with the subsidized
theaters; and in time he came to know Rachel. He was the son of one of
the greatest men who ever lived. She was the child of roving peddlers
whose early training had been in the slums of cities and amid the smoke
of bar-rooms and cafes. She was tainted in a thousand ways, while he
was a man of breeding and right principle. She was a wandering actress;
he was a great minister of state. What could there be between these two?

George Sand gave the explanation in an epigram which, like most
epigrams, is only partly true. She said:

"The count's company must prove very restful to Rachel."

What she meant was, of course, that Walewski's breeding, his dignity
and uprightness, might be regarded only as a temporary repose for the
impish, harsh-voiced, infinitely clever actress. Of course, it was all
this, but we should not take it in a mocking sense. Rachel looked up
out of her depths and gave her heart to this high-minded nobleman. He
looked down and lifted her, as it were, so that she could forget for
the time all the baseness and the brutality that she had known, that
she might put aside her forced vivacity and the self that was not i