subject, until it
degenerates into a habit with long practice, to the caprices of
character, and not seldom to an admirable delicacy of feeling in
actresses who are still young. Coralie, to all appearance bold and
wanton, as the part required, was in reality girlish and timid, and
love had wrought in her a revulsion of her woman's heart against the
comedian's mask. Art, the supreme art of feigning passion and feeling,
had not yet triumphed over nature in her; she shrank before a great
audience from the utterance that belongs to Love alone; and Coralie
suffered besides from another true woman's weakness--she needed
success, born stage queen though she was. She could not confront an
audience with which she was out of sympathy; she was nervous when she
appeared on the stage, a cold reception paralyzed her. Each new part
gave her the terrible sensations of a first appearance. Applause
produced a sort of intoxication which gave her encouragement without
flattering her vanity; at a murmur of dissatisfaction or before a
silent house, she flagged; but a great audience following attentively,
admiringly, willing to be pleased, electrified Coralie. She felt at
once in communication with the nobler qualities of all those
listeners; she felt that she possessed the power of stirring their
souls and carrying them with her. But if this action and reaction of
the audience upon the actress reveals the nervous organization of
genius, it shows no less clearly the poor child's sensitiveness and
delicacy. Lucien had discovered the treasures of her nature; had
learned in the past months that this woman who loved him was still so
much of a girl. And Coralie was unskilled in the wiles of an actress
--she could not fight her own battles nor protect herself against the
machinations of jealousy behind the scenes. Florine was jealous of
her, and Florine was as dangerous and depraved as Coralie was simple
and generous. Roles must come to find Coralie; she was too proud to
implore authors or to submit to dishonoring conditions; she would not
give herself to the first journalist who persecuted her with his
advances and threatened her with his pen. Genius is rare enough in the
extraordinary art of the stage; but genius is only one condition of
success among many, and is positively hurtful unless it is accompanied
by a genius for intrigue in which Coralie was utterly lacking.

Lucien knew how much his friend would suffer on her first appearance
at the