My illusion, alas! was to be short-lived. Mr. Stein returned looking very downcast. He had been received by M. Pedro Gailhard, but that gentleman, in the deep voice which he has skilfully developed and which for twenty-one years has awakened the echoes of the directors’ office at the Opera, did not conceal from him the fact that he had no great desire to engage me. “Let her show me her dances if she cares to,” he said, “but all I can do, in case these dances please me, would be, on condition of her performing nowhere else, to guarantee her a maximum of four performances a month.” “Four performances? That is hardly enough,” my agent ventured to remark. “It is too many for a dancer who before coming to Paris already has imitators here.” Influenced by the voice and bearing of a man who had formerly played the part of Mephistopheles on the stage which he now directed, Mr. Stein did not dare to make further inquiries. The impression made upon me by the terms that my agent brought back is easily imagined. To accept four appearances a month, even if M. Gailhard actually made a proposition to that effect, was not to be thought of. That, from a pecuniary standpoint, was altogether insufficient. I thought the matter over. My mind was quickly made up. After dinner I bundled my agent and my mother into a carriage and gave the driver the address of the Folies-Bergère, for I knew that my agent, on his own responsibility, had written to the manager of this big music hall. On the way I explained to Mr. Stein that I was governing myself by the advice that he had given me sometime before, and that I was going to ask the manager of the Folies-Bergère for an engagement. Imagine my astonishment when, in getting out of the carriage in front of the Folies, I found myself face to face with a “serpentine dancer” reproduced in violent tones on some huge placards. This dancer was not Loie Fuller. Here was the cataclysm, my utter annihilation. Nevertheless I went into the theatre. I stated the object of my visit. I asked to see the manager. They told me that I could be received only at the close of the performance, and they assigned us, my mother, Mr. Stein and myself, seats in one corner of the balcony, whence we were able to follow the performance. The performance! I could not help poking a little fun at that performance. It would be hard to describe what I saw that evening. I awaited the “serpentine dancer,” my rival, my robber--for she was a robber, was she not, she who was stealing not only my dances but all my beautiful dreams? Finally she came out. I trembled all over. Cold perspiration appeared on my temples. I shut my eyes. When I reopened them I saw there on the stage one of my contemporaries who, some time before, in the United States, having borrowed money from me had neglected to repay it. She had kept right on borrowing, that was all. But this time I had made up my mind to force her to give back what she had taken from me.