A short time after this Mme. Claretie sent me tickets for her box at the Théâtre-Français. I went there with several friends. There were twelve of us, among whom was Mrs. Mason, wife of the American Consul-General, who is the most remarkable statesman I have ever known, and the best diplomatist of the service. In return for the Clareties’ kindness I invited them to be present at one of my rehearsals of ‘Salome.’ They were good enough to accept my invitation and one evening they arrived at the Théâtre des Arts while I was at work. Later I came forward to join them. We stood in the gloom of a dimly lighted hall. The orchestra was rehearsing. All at once a dispute arose between the musical composer and the orchestra leader. The composer said: “They don’t do it that way at the Opera.” Thereupon the young orchestra leader replied: “Don’t speak to me of subsidised theatres. There’s nothing more imbecile anywhere.” He laid great stress on the words “subsidised” and “imbecile.” M. Claretie asked me who this young man was. I had not heard exactly what he said. Nevertheless, as I knew something embarrassing had occurred, I tried to excuse him, alleging that he had been rehearsing all day, that half his musicians had deserted to take positions at the Opera and that they had left him only the understudies. M. Claretie, whose good nature is proverbial, paid no attention to the incident. Several days later, indeed, on November 5, 1907, he wrote for the _Temps_ a long article, which is more eulogistic than I deserve, but which I cite because it gives an impression of my work at a rehearsal. “The other evening,” he wrote, “I had, as it were, a vision of a theatre of the future, something of the nature of a feministic theatre. “Women are more and more taking men’s places. They are steadily supplanting the so-called stronger sex. The court-house swarms with women lawyers. The literature of imagination and observation will soon belong to women of letters. In spite of man’s declaration that there shall be no woman doctor for him the female physician continues to pass her examinations and brilliantly. Just watch and you will see woman growing in influence and power; and if, as in Gladstone’s phrase, the nineteenth century was the working-man’s century, the twentieth will be the women’s century.