but hers was a noble nature, and she
possessed the great actress' faculty of suddenly standing aloof from
self. This strange phenomenon is 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