he frank
promptings of nature.

That is why a lesson of Regnier to his pupils was so interesting to the
outsider. The latter was, as it were, initiated into all the resources
the great actor has at his command wherewith to produce his illusion
upon the public. Among Regnier's pupils those were his favourites who
never allowed themselves to be carried away by their feelings, and who
trusted to these resources as indicated to them by their tutor. He was
to a certain extent doubtful of the others. "Feelings vary; effects
intelligently conceived, studied, and carried out ought never to vary,"
he said. Consequently it became one of his theories that those most
plentifully endowed with natural gifts were not likely to become more
perfect than those who had been treated niggardly in that respect,
provided the vocation and the perseverance were there. The reverse of
Samson, who was proudest of Rachel, Regnier was never half as proud of
M. Coquelin as of others who had given him far more trouble. Augustine
Brohan explained the feeling in her own inimitable way: "Regnier est
comme le grand seigneur qui s'enamourache d'une paysanne a qui il faut
tout enseigner; si moi j'etais homme, j'aimerais mieux une demoiselle de
bonne famille, qui n'aurait pas besoin de tant d'enseignement."

Mdlle. Brohan exaggerated a little bit. Regnier's pupils were not
peasant children, to whom he had to teach everything; a great many, like
Coquelin, required very little teaching, and all the others had the
receptive qualities which make teaching a pleasure. The latter, boys and
girls, had to a certain extent become like Regnier himself, "bundles of
tricks," and, what is perhaps not so surprising to students of
psychology and physiology, their features had contracted a certain
likeness to his. At the first blush one might have mistaken them for his
children. And they might have been, for the patience he had with them.
It was rarely exhausted, but he now and then seemed to be waiting for a
new supply. At such times there was a frantic clutch at the shock,
grey-haired head, or else a violent blowing of the perky nose in a large
crimson chequered handkerchief, its owner standing all the while on one
leg; the attitude was irresistibly comic, but the pupils were used to
it, and not a muscle of their faces moved.

Those who imagine that Regnier's courses were merely so many lessons of
elocution and gesticulation would be altogether mistaken. Regnier,
unlike