The excellence of Adrienne's delivery was equalled, if not surpassed, by her really wonderful by-play. Like Mlle. Molière, she possessed in a very marked degree the difficult art of listening, the extreme mobility of her features enabling her to assume at will every shade of emotion and exhibit successively the different impressions which the words addressed to her would naturally produce. "Perhaps no one," observes the _Mercure_, "has ever so well understood the art of silent scenes, that is to say, listened so well and so well expressed the sense of the words uttered by the actor who was on the stage with her"; while Dumas d'Aigueberre tells us that "her attitudes were noble and natural, that she invested the movements of her arms with inimitable grace, and that her eyes announced what she was about to say." She possessed, too, a very rare gift--the art of concealing art, of entirely subordinating the interpreter to the work. The dramatist Collé, a critic by no means easy to please, it may be remarked, declares that "her treatment of every detail of a rôle was perfect; and, in this way, caused one to forget the actress; one saw only the personage whom she happened to be representing." Yet another trait, and one which provoked general admiration, was the rapidity and completeness with which she passed from one state of mind to its exact opposite, from profound grief to joyous gaiety, from frenzied anger to moving tenderness. "When in the rôle of Elisabeth,"[73] says the _Mercure_, "she learned of the love of the Comte d'Essex for the Duchess d'Irton; when, in fact, she was delivered to the greatest scorn which a woman, and, in particular, a queen, can endure, with what sensibility did she descend from the height of pride to the extreme of the greatest tenderness, even so far as to co-operate with the duchess, in order to save the count." Brilliant _tragédienne_ though Adrienne undoubtedly was, in scenes which called for an unusual display of passion, her acting appears to have left a good deal to be desired, a circumstance probably attributable to her want of physical strength. According to Collé, she "excelled in scenes where the greatest finesse was needed rather than those which required strength." Her acting, too, was somewhat uneven; to see her at her best, Dumas d'Aigueberre tells us, "it was necessary for her to be animated either by some part which pleased her or by some object of interest." In fact, though no one had ever given such magnificent renderings of the rôles of Monime and Bérénice, she lacked the courage and determination which had enabled Mlle. de Champmeslé to make a success out of the most mediocre part. The receipts of the Comédie-Française during the early years of its existence would, we are inclined to think, have been much less satisfactory had it fallen to Adrienne Lecouvreur's lot to interpret the insipid heroines of Pradon and Boyer.