Duquesnel did not utter a word, but he pulled his moustache to hide a smile. Chilly was coming round to his _protégée_ after all. He nodded his head in an indifferent way, in answer to his partner’s questioning look, and we began again, I reading all the spoken choruses. Every one applauded, and the conductor of the orchestra was delighted, for the poor man had suffered enough. The first performance was a veritable little triumph for me! Oh, quite a little one, but still full of promise for my future. The audience, charmed with the sweetness of my voice and its crystal purity, encored the part of the spoken choruses, and I was rewarded by three rounds of applause. At the end of the act Chilly came to me and said, “_Thou_ art adorable!” His _thou_ rather annoyed me, but I answered mischievously, using the same form of speech: “_Thou_ findest me fatter?” He burst into a fit of laughter, and from that day forth we both used the familiar _thou_ and became the best friends imaginable. Oh, that Odéon Theatre! It is the theatre I loved most. I was very sorry to leave it, for every one liked each other there, and every one was gay. The theatre is a little like the continuation of school. The young artistes came there, and Duquesnel was an intelligent manager, and very polite and young himself. During rehearsal we often went off, several of us together, to play ball in the Luxembourg, during the acts in which we were not “on.” I used to think of my few months at the Comédie Française. The little world I had known there had been stiff, scandal- mongering, and jealous. I recalled my few months at the Gymnase. Hats and dresses were always discussed there, and every one chattered about a hundred things that had nothing to do with art. At the Odéon I was happy. We thought of nothing but putting plays on, and we rehearsed morning, afternoon, and at all hours, and I liked that very much. For the summer I had taken a little house in the Villa Montmorency at Auteuil. I went to the theatre in a _petit duc_, which I drove myself. I had two wonderful ponies that Aunt Rosine had given to me because they had very nearly broken her neck by taking fright at St. Cloud at a whirligig of wooden horses. I used to drive at full speed along the quays, and in spite of the atmosphere brilliant with the July sunshine, and the gaiety of everything outside, I always ran up the cold cracked steps of the theatre with veritable joy, and rushed up to my dressing- room, wishing every one I passed good morning on my way. When I had taken off my coat and gloves I went on to the stage, delighted to be once more in that infinite darkness with only a poor light (a _servante_ hanging here and there on a tree, a turret, a wall, or placed on a bench) thrown on the faces of the artistes for a few seconds. There was nothing more vivifying for me than that atmosphere, full of microbes, nothing more gay than that obscurity, and nothing more brilliant than that darkness.