“Enter the room and speak to your mother just as if you had never gone away. Your presence will save her.” And that is what happened. From the moment of my return she began to improve. But this illness left her very weak. She had a first attack of paralysis and her trouble gained imperceptibly upon her, leaving each day less hope of her recovery. She was destined, without ever being restored to health, to die in Paris in February, 1908. In Russia they started a long lawsuit against me for not having kept my agreement, and before it was ended I lost, including other offers, which I could not accept without my electrical apparatus and my costumes that were held as security, fully 250,000 francs. During my second season at the Folies-Bergère, when, through the solicitude of M. Marchand, my dressing-room was always filled with flowers by reason of the distinguished visitors who came to see me and to whom the directors would offer champagne, an attachment was put upon my receipts and we often had hardly enough to eat. But for the manager’s wife, who at times sent us things to eat in a basket, I should often have danced on an empty stomach, and have sipped champagne in my dressing-room without having had anything to eat at home. My work on the stage was so fatiguing that when I had finished dancing the mechanicians would carry me to my _appartement_, which was connected with the theatre. I continued this work for a whole season without being sufficiently well fed to keep up my strength, and being all the while in an _appartement_ the sanitation of which was defective. Therein, I am certain, lay one of the reasons for the progress of my mother’s illness. My health, too, was affected to such an extent that I am no longer able to endure fatigue as I once endured it. However, it all happened as a result of circumstances, and I have no wish to blame anybody. The manager of the theatre had given me this _appartement_ and had had it arranged specially for me in order that I might not be obliged to go out into the street, heated with dancing. Since then I have never returned to Russia, for every time that a journey to that country was mentioned my poor mother trembled with fright, and there was never any question of my undertaking it. This adventure at least caused me to believe in one thing--inspiration. For if the priest in the railway compartment was not inspired, then what was he? VIII SARAH BERNHARDT--THE DREAM AND THE REALITY I was scarcely sixteen years old. I was then playing _ingenue_ roles on the road, when on the theatrical horizon there appeared the announcement that the greatest tragedienne of modern times, Sarah Bernhardt, the most distinguished of French actresses, was about to come to America! What an event! We awaited it with feverish curiosity, for the divine Sarah was not a human being like the rest of us. She was a spirit endowed with genius.