Regnier was chagrined. “_Malfaiteurs_,” he called the judges. And some of the newspaper comment showed a recognition of unusual merit in the young Réjane. Sarcey, the reigning king of the Paris critics, had again been present, and _Le Temps_ rang with his praises of her. And his praises were perhaps better than official prizes. A score of years later, M. Meunier wrote: “To-day, as then, though twenty years have passed, there is no possibility of success, no chance of getting an engagement, for a pupil on leaving the _Conservatoire_, unless a certain all-powerful critic, supreme judge, arbiter beyond appeal, sees fit to pronounce a decision confirming the verdict of the Examining Jury.... He smiles or frowns, the Jury bows its head. The pupils tremble before this monstrous Fetich--for the Public thinks with him, and sees only through his spectacles; and no star can shine till his short sight has discovered it. This puissant astronomer is Monsieur Francisque Sarcey.... “Monsieur Sarcey smiled upon and applauded Réjane’s début at the _Conservatoire_. He consecrated to her as many as fifty lines of intelligent criticism; and I pray to Heaven they may be remembered to his credit on the Day of Judgment. Here they are, in that two-penny, half-penny style of his, so dear to the readers of _Le Temps_: “‘I own that, for my part, I should have willingly awarded to the latter (Mlle. Réjane) a first prize. It seems to me that she deserved it. But the Jury is frequently influenced by extrinsic and private motives, into which it is not permitted to pry. A first prize carries with it the right of entrance into the _Comédie Française_; and the Jury did not think Mademoiselle Réjane, with her little wide-awake face, suited to the vast frame of the House of Molière. That is well enough; but the second prize which it awarded her authorized the director of the _Odéon_ to receive her into his company; and that perspective alone ought to have sufficed to dissuade the Jury from the course it took.... Every one knows that at present the _Odéon_ is, for a beginner, a most indifferent school.... Instead of shoving its promising pupils into it by the shoulders, the _Conservatoire_ should forbid them to approach it, lest they should be lost there. What will Mademoiselle Réjane do at the _Odéon_? Show her legs in _La Jeunnesse de Louis XIV_, which is to be revived at the opening of the season? A pretty state of things. She must either go to the _Vaudeville_ or to the _Gymnase_. It is there that she will form herself; it is there that she will learn her trade, show what she is capable of, and prepare herself for the _Comédie Française_, if she is ever to enter it.... She recited a fragment from _Les Trois Sultanes_.... I was delighted by her choice. _Les Trois Sultanes_ is so little known nowadays.... What wit there is in her look, her smile! With her small eyes, shrewd and piercing, with her little face thrust forward, she has so knowing