As Sarcey said, I made a complete failure of my début. My excuse, though, was not the “stage fright” to which he attributed it, but the terrible anxiety I felt on seeing my mother hurriedly leave her seat in the dress circle five minutes after my appearance on the stage. I had glanced at her on entering, and had noticed her deathlike pallor. When she went out, I felt that she was about to have one of those attacks which endangered her life, so that my first act seemed to me interminable. I uttered one word after another, stammering through my sentences haphazard, with only one idea in my head, a longing to know what had happened. Oh, the public cannot conceive of the tortures endured by the unfortunate comedians who are there before them in flesh and blood on the stage, gesticulating and uttering phrases, while their heart, all torn with anguish, is with the beloved absent one who is suffering! As a rule, one can fling away the worries and anxieties of everyday life, put off one’s own personality for a few hours, take on another and, forgetting everything else, enter as it were into another life. But that is impossible when our dear ones are suffering; anxiety then lays hold of us, attenuating the bright side, magnifying the dark, maddening our brain, which is living two lives at once, and tormenting our heart, which is beating as though it would burst. These were the sensations I experienced during that first act. “Mamma? What has happened to mamma?” were my first words on leaving the stage. No one could tell me anything. Croizette came up to me and said: “What’s the matter? I hardly recognize you, and you weren’t yourself at all just now in the play.” In a few words I told her what I had seen, and all that I had felt. Frédéric Febvre sent at once to get news, and the doctor came hurrying to me. “Your mother had a fainting fit, mademoiselle,” he said, “but they have just taken her home.” “It was her heart, wasn’t it?” I asked, looking at him. “Yes,” he replied, “madame’s heart is in a very agitated state.” “Oh, I know how ill she is!” I said, and not being able to control myself any longer, I burst into sobs. Croizette helped me back to my dressing-room. She was very kind, for we had known each other from childhood, and were very fond of each other. Nothing ever estranged us, in spite of all the malicious gossip of envious people, and all the little miseries due to vanity.