erved his
incognito for the present. As soon as we had supped, Count Saxe sent
me to see Mademoiselle Lecouvreur, to ask for an interview. I went to
the Theatre Francais, and being recognized--for it is not easy to
forget so ugly a man as I am--I was permitted behind the scenes.

The play was that very _Herod and Mariamne_ of Monsieur Voltaire's
that Mademoiselle Lecouvreur had played two years before, which
Jacques Haret had so cleverly burlesqued, and in which Mademoiselle
Capello had been so rashly brilliant. From the wings I watched the
house--well lighted, for the king's Majesty was there, looking
frightfully bored in the royal box--and a mob of fine people. I
presumed, from seeing Voltaire's piece played, that he was at last
home from England, and sure enough, there he was, sitting in a box. He
had but lately arrived, as I afterward learned. He looked well
dressed, well fed and very impudent. The people seemed to relish his
presence, for after the second act there were cries for him, to which
he responded. He was sitting with some ladies of rank--catch that
notary's son appearing in public except with the great! But I admit he
wrote some good things.

I was distressed to see the changes that two years had made in
Mademoiselle Lecouvreur. She was paler and slighter than ever, and
although she acted her part with sublime fire and energy, it was plain
that the soul within her was driving her frail body as the spur drives
a tired horse.

At the end of the second act, after the people had shouted themselves
hoarse with delight, I asked to be shown to Madame Lecouvreur's
dressing room--for she was no longer able to go to the foyer during
the interval between the acts, so a snuffy old box keeper told me. I
knocked at her door and she bade me enter.

She lay on a couch, and was panting with fatigue. The paint on her
face made her look ghastly at close range. By her sat Monsieur
Voltaire; and I will say that I felt a softening of the heart toward
him at that moment which I had never known before. Those fiery eyes of
his were full of tenderness and soft pity; he had left his fine
friends for Mademoiselle Lecouvreur, and sat by her, fanning her. And
when he spoke to her his voice had more of the human in it than one
could have thought.

"Come, come, Mademoiselle," he was saying, "you must not imagine
yourself ill. If you do, what will become of me? Who will make the
world believe I can write plays, if Adrienne can no