Often, when I was a child, I wished to kill myself in order to vex others. I remember once having swallowed the contents of a large ink pot after being compelled by mamma to swallow a “_panade_”[2] because she imagined that _panades_ were good for the health. Our nurse had told her my dislike to this form of nourishment, adding that every morning I emptied the _panade_ into the slop pail. I had, of course, a very bad stomach ache, and screamed out in pain. I cried to mamma: “It is you who have killed me”—and my poor mother wept. She never knew the truth, but they never again made me swallow anything against my will. Footnote 2: Bread stewed a long time in water and flavored with a little butter and sugar; a kind of “sops” given to children in France. Well, after so many years had gone over my head, I experienced the same bitter and childish sentiment. “I don’t care,” I said, “I shall certainly fall senseless, vomiting blood, and perhaps I shall die! And it will serve Perrin right. He will be furious!” Yes, that is what I thought. I am, at times, very foolish. Why? I don’t know how to explain it, but I admit it. The 6th of August, therefore, I played, in tropical heat, the part of _Zaïre_. The entire audience was bathed in perspiration. I saw the spectators through a mist. The piece, badly staged as regards scenery, but very well presented as regards costumes, was particularly well played by Mounet-Sully, _Orosmane_, Laroche, _Nerestan_, and myself—_Zaïre_—and obtained an immense success. I was determined to faint, determined to vomit blood, determined to die, in order to enrage Perrin. I gave myself entirely up to it. I had sobbed, I had loved, I had suffered, and I had been stabbed by the poignard of _Orosmane_, uttering a true cry of suffering, for I had felt the steel penetrate my breast; then falling panting, dying, on the Oriental divan, I had meant to die in reality, and dared scarcely move my arms, convinced as I was that I was in my death agony and somewhat afraid, I must admit, at having succeeded in playing such a nasty trick on Perrin. But my surprise was great when the curtain fell at the close of the piece, and I got up quickly to answer to the call and salute the public without languor, without fainting, ready to recommence the piece. And I marked this performance with a little white stone—for that day I learned that my vital force was at the service of my intellect. I had desired to follow the impulse of my brain, whose conceptions seemed to me to be too forceful for my physical strength to carry out and I found myself, having given out all of which I was capable—and more—in perfect equilibrium. Then I saw the possibility of the longed-for future.