A curious thing happened. Her great first-night audience Duse had not been able to overwhelm. Now, by the slow-working influence of her very genuine art, she gained a cumulative hold on the imagination and affection of the Paris public. An open letter to her, signed “Sganarelle,” appeared in _Le Temps_, appealing to her to give a final matinée especially for her brother and sister artists to whom “her methods had opened new horizons.” “Sganarelle” proved to be Sarcey. His project was taken up with an enthusiasm that told how effective, after all, had been Duse’s unobtrusive art. Lavrouniet, in _Figaro_, speaking of Bernhardt and Duse, in a few sentences admirably characterized the art of both. The former, he says, “from a constant desire to be unique, supplies all the highest and rarest expressions of art, except one--simplicity. In La Duse, we have seen on the stage a woman’s nature and that of an _artiste_ completing each other--the _artiste_ playing with all the sensitiveness of a woman, and the woman allowing herself to be entirely absorbed in the _artiste_.” Lemaître also wrote sympathetically: “She came to us, preceded by a European reputation a rival sister of the great Sarah. We were not deceived, for Duse is a dramatic _artiste_, original to the core, and of the first rank. We were told she was beyond everything an astonishing realist; that she lived her parts rather than played them, and in this way took her audience by storm. And that statement is doubtless exact.... What seems to me incontestably Mme. Duse’s is her singular charm and grace, her sweetness and tenderness. On that account her search for the truth, her solicitude to avoid the exhibition of any artifice, her realism, so very minute and so very sincere, reach even to poetry. Hers is the unique charm of a matured woman,--impassioned, bruised, suffering, nervous,--in whom, however, survives a young and ingenuous grace, almost that of a young girl, of a strange young girl.”