t arrived for Clotilde's
entrance, and a faint murmur of curiosity and expectation ran through
the audience. She spoke her lines discreetly, but without much warmth;
it was easy to see that she was afraid. The curtain fell in a dead
silence.

"Immediately the waiting-room and passage-way were filled by
Inocencio's friends, who came eagerly to tell him that this first
performance of his play was a great success,--but what was the matter
with Clotilde? She hardly put any movement into her part,--and she was
usually so much alive, so tremendously forceful! Our young friend
acknowledged that, as a matter of fact, she had felt badly scared, and
that this had hampered her seriously. The author, greatly alarmed for
the fate of his work, endeavored to persuade her that there was
nothing to be afraid of, that all she had to do was to be herself, and
that she was not to think of him at all while she spoke her lines.

"'I can't help it,' insisted Clotilde, 'all the time that I am
speaking I keep thinking that you are the author, and imagining that
the play is not going to succeed, and it makes me so frightened.'

"Inocencio was in despair; he tried entreaties, advice, arguments, he
embraced her without caring who saw him; he tried to infuse courage
into her by appealing to her vanity as an artist; in short, he did
everything imaginable to save his play.

"The second act began. Clotilde had a few pathetic scenes. In the
beginning there was a certain slight disturbance in the audience, and
this sufficed to disconcert her completely, and to make her acting
irremediably bad, worse than she had ever acted in her whole life. A
good deal of coughing was heard, and some loud murmurs of impatience.
At the end of that second act a few indiscreet friends tried to
applaud, but the audience drowned them out with an immense and
terrifying series of hisses. The author, who was standing by my side,
pale as death, relieved his feelings with a flood of coarse words, and
made his way to Pepe's room, which faces that of Clotilde, and where
his friends consoled him, casting the whole blame for the failure upon
her, and inflaming more and more the anger surging in his heart.
Meanwhile, our friend was utterly crushed and overcome, and
continually calling for her Inocencio. In order to spare her further
trouble, I told her that the author had accepted the situation
resignedly, and had left the theater to get a breath of air. The
unhappy girl bitterl