She said then that I must have heard it read by my brother; and I remembered that it was so. From this time on I was always reciting poems, wherever I happened to be. I used to make little speeches, but in prose, for I employed the words that were natural for me, contenting myself with translating the spirit of the things that I recited without bothering much over word-by-word renderings. With my firm and very tenacious memory, I needed then only to hear a poem once to recite it, from beginning to end, without making a single mistake. I have always had a wonderful memory. I have proved it repeatedly by unexpectedly taking parts of which I did not know a word the day before the first performance. It was thus, for instance, when I played the part of Marguerite Gauthier in _La Dame aux Camélias_ with only four hours to learn the lines. On the Sunday of which I have been speaking, my mother experienced the first of the nervous shocks that might have warned her, had she been able to understand, that she was destined to become the prey of a dreadful disease, which would never leave her. From the spring which followed my first appearance at the Folies-Bergère until the time of her death she accompanied me in all my travels. As I was writing this, some days before her end, I could hear her stir or speak, for she was in the next room with two nurses watching over her night and day. While I was working I would go to her from time to time, rearrange her pillows a little, lift her, give her medicine, or some little thing to eat, put out her candle, open the window a moment, and then I would return to my task. After the day of my debut at the Chicago Progressive Lyceum I continued my dramatic career. The incidents of my performances would suffice to fill several volumes. For without interruption, adventures succeeded one another to such an extent that I shall never undertake the work of describing them all. I should say that when this first theatrical incident took place I was just two and a half years old. III HOW I CREATED THE SERPENTINE DANCE In 1890 I was on a tour in London with my mother. A manager engaged me to go to the United States and take the principal part in a new play entitled, “Quack, M.D.” In this piece I was to play with two American actors, Mr. Will Rising and Mr. Louis de Lange, who has since then been mysteriously assassinated.