It was under these conditions that I prepared for the second act of _Phèdre_, in which I was to appear for the first time before the English public. Three times over I put rouge on my cheeks, blackened my eyes, and three times over I took it all off again with a sponge. I thought I looked ugly, and it seemed to me I was thinner than ever and not so tall. I closed my eyes to listen to my voice. My special pitch is “_le bal_,” which I pronounce low down with the open _a_, “_le bâââl_,” or take high by dwelling on the _l_—“_le balll_.” Ah, but there was no doubt about it; my “_le bal_” neither sounded high nor low, my voice was hoarse in the low notes and not clear in the soprano. I cried with rage, and just then I was informed that the second act of _Phèdre_ was about to commence. This drove me wild. I had not my veil on, nor my rings, and my cameo belt was not fastened. I began to murmur: “_Le voici! Vers mon cœur tout mon sang se retire. J’oublie en le voyant...._” That word “_j’oublie_” struck me with a new idea. What if I did forget the words I had to say? Why, yes. What was it I had to say? I did not know—I could not remember. What was I to say after “_en le voyant_”? No one answered me. Every one was alarmed at my nervous state. I heard Got mumble, “She’s going mad!” Mlle. Thénard, who was playing Œnone, my old nurse, said to me, “Calm yourself. All the English have gone to Paris; there’s no one in the house but Belgians.” This foolishly comic speech turned my thoughts in another direction. “How stupid you are!” I said. “You know how frightened I was at Brussels!” “Oh, all for nothing,” she answered calmly. “There were only English people in the theatre that day.” I had to go on the stage at once, and I could not even answer her, but she had changed the current of my ideas. I still had stage fright, but not the fright that paralyses, only the kind that drives one wild. This is bad enough, but it is preferable to the other sort. It makes one do too much, but at any rate one does something. The whole house had applauded my arrival on the stage for a few seconds, and as I bent my head in acknowledgment I said within myself, “Yes—yes—you shall see. I’m going to give you my very blood—my life itself—my soul.” When I began my part, as I had lost my self-possession, I started on rather too high a note, and when once in full swing I could not get lower again—I simply could not stop. I suffered, I wept, I implored, I cried out; and it was all real. My suffering was horrible; my tears were flowing, scorching and bitter. I implored Hippolyte for the love which was killing me, and my arms stretched out to Mounet-Sully were the arms of Phèdre writhing in the cruel longing for his embrace. The inspiration had come. When the curtain fell Mounet-Sully lifted me up inanimate and carried me to my dressing-room.