“Well, you see, Madame, I came to ask you to sell me your group, _After the Tempest_.” I began to laugh. “Ma foi, Monsieur, I am treating for that with the firm of Susse, and they offer me 6000 francs. If you will give ten you may have it.” “All right,” he said. “Here are 10,000 francs. Have you pen and ink?” “No.” “Ah,” said he, “allow me!” And he produced a little case in which there were pen and ink. I made out the receipt, and gave him an order to take the group from my studio in Paris. He went away, and I heard the bells of the horses ringing and then dying away in the distance. After this I was often invited to the house of this original person. XXVI THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE GOES TO LONDON Shortly after, I came back to Paris. At the theatre they were preparing for a benefit performance for Bressant, who was about to retire from the stage. It was agreed that Mounet-Sully and I should play an act from _Othello_, by Jean Aicard. The theatre was well filled, and the audience in a good humour. After the song I was in bed as Desdemona, when suddenly I heard the public laugh, softly at first, and then irrepressibly. Othello had just come in, in the darkness, in his shirt or very little more, with a lantern in his hand, and gone to a door hidden in some drapery. The public, that impersonal unity, has no hesitation in taking part in these unseemly manifestations, but each member of the audience, taken as a separate individual, would be ashamed to admit that he participated in them. But the ridicule thrown on this act by the exaggerated pantomime of the actor prevented the play being staged again, and it was only twenty years later that _Othello_ as an entire play was produced at the Théâtre Français. I was then no longer there. After having played Bérénice in _Mithridate_ successfully, I reappeared in my _rôle_ of the Queen in _Ruy Blas_. The play was as successful at the Théâtre Français as it had been at the Odéon, and the public was, if anything, still more favourable to me. Mounet-Sully played Ruy Blas. He was admirable in the part, and infinitely superior to Lafontaine, who had played it at the Odéon. Frédéric Febvre, very well costumed, rendered his part in a most interesting manner, but he was not so good as Geffroy, who was the most distinguished and the most terrifying Don Salluste that could be imagined. My relations with Perrin were more and more strained. He was pleased that I was successful, for the sake of the theatre; he was happy at the magnificent receipts of _Ruy Blas_; but he would have much preferred that it had been another than I who received all the applause. My independence, my horror of submission, even in appearance, annoyed him vastly. One day my servant came to tell me that an elderly Englishman was asking to see me so insistently that he thought it better to come and tell me, though I had given orders I was not to be disturbed.