I was first received by Perrin the mannikin. He was standing up, his head bent, bowing to a woman, his arm outstretched to indicate the hospitable arm-chair. He waited with a certain affectation until I was seated before sitting down himself. He then picked up a paper-knife, in order to have something to do with his hands, and in a rather weak voice, the voice of the mannikin, he remarked: “Have you thought it over, Mademoiselle?” “Yes, Monsieur, and here I am to give my signature.” Before he had time to give me any encouragement to dabble with the things on his desk, I drew up my chair, picked up a pen, and prepared to sign the paper. I did not take enough ink at first, and I stretched my arm out across the whole width of the writing table, and dipped my pen this time resolutely to the bottom of the ink-pot. I took too much ink, however, this time, and on the return journey a huge spot of it fell on the large sheet of white paper in front of the mannikin. He bent his head, for he was slightly short-sighted, and looked for a moment like a bird when it discovers a hemp-seed in its grain. He then proceeded to put aside the blotted sheet. “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 mannikin 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 mannikin 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 in _Ruy Blas_ that night at the Odéon. Towards ten o’clock Duquesnel came to my dressing-room. “You were rather rough on that poor Chilly,” he said. “And you really were not nice. You ought to have come back when I called you. Is it true, as Paul Meurice tells us, that you went straight to the Théâtre Français?” “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 I do not deserve.” He was right, but the thing was done. A moment later Chilly arrived, furious, gesticulating, shouting, stammering in his anger.