“And this astonishing complexity of temperament is reflected in her childhood, in her life, and in her tastes to-day. The youngster who passed her evenings in the balcony of the _Ambigu_ sucking an orange, who stood in ecstasy before the glass of Adèle Page, and who for years dreamed of such a life as the acme of luxury,--her one sees in the portrait by Besnard. But the young lady of the _Conservatoire_, the favorite pupil of Regnier, who won her first success in _L’Intrigue Épistolaire_, the elegant and finished interpreter of the life of the _salons_ and _cercles_, the full-grown _artiste_ of _Marquise_: all these live in the painting of Chartran.” “_Ces deux jolis noms d’une seule et même personne: Réjane, Madame Sans-Gêne_”; thus one of her countrymen happily characterized her. But another was just as right when he called her “the innumerable Réjane.” ELEONORA DUSE When the American papers announced, in the spring of 1914, that Eleonora Duse had recovered her health and was contemplating a return to the stage, the news had a curious effect, somewhat as if the New York press had casually said that “Ada Rehan and Mr. Daly’s company are to play _The Taming of the Shrew_ next Monday.” A little later the cable brought the announcement that Bernhardt was thinking of coming again to America, and though Mme. Sarah is almost old enough to be Duse’s mother, the news of her coming had not the same effect of turning the clock backward. For Bernhardt is apparently one of the earth’s permanent phenomena, like the return of vegetation in the spring; while the tragic figure of Duse, though she played in America only a dozen years ago, seems somehow to belong to the last generation. [Illustration: ELEONORA DUSE] She is, however, not yet really an old woman, for she was born October 3, 1859. The genius of strange and hard experience, which has attended her all her life, was present even at her birth, for it occurred in a third-class carriage of a railway train, near Vigevano, while her parents, the members of a band of actors, were on their way from Venice to Milan. A troubled life then began.