I left the Odéon with very great regret, for I adored and still adore that theater. It always seems as though in itself it were a little provincial town. Its hospitable arcades, under which so many poor old _savants_ take the air and are sheltered at the same time from the sun; the large flags all round, between the crevices of which microscopic yellow grass grows; its tall pillars, blackened by time, by hands, and by the dirt from the road; the uninterrupted noise going on all around, the departure of the omnibuses, like the departure of the old coaches; the fraternity of the people who meet there, everything, even to the very railings of the Luxembourg, give it a quite special aspect in the midst of Paris. Then, too, there is a kind of odor of the colleges there, the very walls are impregnated with youthful hopes. People are not always talking there of yesterday as they do in the other theaters. The young _artistes_ who come there talk of to-morrow. In short, my mind never goes back to those few years of my life without a childish emotion, without thinking of laughter and without a dilation of the nostrils, inhaling again the odor of little ordinary bouquets, clumsily tied up, bouquets which had all the freshness of flowers that grow in the open air, flowers that were the offerings of the hearts of twenty summers, little bouquets paid for out of the purses of students. I would not take anything away with me from the Odéon. I left the furniture of my dressing-room to a young _artiste_. I left my costumes, all the little toilette knickknacks. I divided them and gave them away. I felt that my life of hopes and dreams was to cease there. I felt that the ground was now ready for the fruition of all the dreams, that life was about to commence, and I divined rightly. My first experience at the Comédie Française had not been a success. I knew that I was going into the lion’s den. I counted few friends in this house, except Laroche, Coquelin, and Mounet-Sully; the two first my friends of the _Conservatoire_, and the latter of the Odéon. Among the women Marie Lloyd and Sophie Croizette, both friends of my childhood, the disagreeable Jouassain, who was nice only to me, and the adorable Mlle. Brohan, whose goodness delighted the soul, whose wit charmed the mind, and whose indifference rebuffed devotion.