“Wait a minute! oh, wait a minute!” I exclaimed, seizing the inky paper. “I want to see whether I am doing right or not to sign. If that is a butterfly I am right, and if anything else, no matter what, I am wrong.” I took the sheet, doubled it in the middle of the enormous blot and pressed it firmly together. Emile Perrin thereupon began to laugh, giving up his manikin attitude entirely. He leaned over to examine the paper with me, and we opened it very gently, just as one opens one’s hand after imprisoning a fly. When the paper was spread open, in the midst of its whiteness, a magnificent black butterfly with outspread wings was to be seen. “Well, then,” said Perrin, with nothing of the manikin left, “we were quite right in signing.” After this we talked for some time, like two friends who meet again, for this man was charming and very fascinating in spite of his ugliness. When I left him we were friends and delighted with each other. I was playing “Ruy Blas” that night at the Odéon. Toward ten o’clock Duquesnel came to my dressing-room. “You were rather rough on that poor Chilly,” he said. “And then, too, you really were not nice. You ought to have come back when I called you. Is it true, as Paul Maurice tells us, that you went straight to the Théâtre Française?” “Here, read for yourself,” I said, handing him my engagement with the Comédie. Duquesnel took the paper and read it. “Will you let me show it to Chilly?” he asked. “Show it him, certainly,” I replied. He came nearer and said in a grave, hurt tone: “You ought never to have done that without telling me first. It shows a lack of confidence, and I did not deserve that.” He was right, but the thing was done. A moment later Chilly arrived, furious, gesticulating, shouting, stammering in his anger. “It is abominable!” he said. “It is treason, and you had not even the right to do it! I shall make you pay damages!” As I felt in a bad humor, I turned my back on him and excused myself in as poor a way as possible to Duquesnel. He was hurt, and I was a little ashamed, for this man had given me nothing but proofs of kindliness; and it was he who, in spite of Chilly and many other unwilling people, had held the door open for my future. Chilly kept his word and brought an action against me and the Comédie. I lost and had to pay six thousand francs damage to the managers of the Odéon. A few months later Victor Hugo invited the interpreters of “Ruy Blas” to a big supper in honor of the one hundredth performance. This was a great delight to me, as I had never been present at a supper of this kind. [Illustration: SKULL IN MADAME BERNHARDT’S LIBRARY, WITH AUTOGRAPH VERSES BY VICTOR HUGO.]