She
scarcely has time for food. When she plays, an actress can live no
life of her own; she can neither dress, nor eat, nor talk. Florine
often has no time to sup. On returning from a play, which lasts, in
these days, till after midnight, she does not get to bed before two in
the morning; but she must rise early to study her part, order her
dresses, try them on, breakfast, read her love-letters, answer them,
discuss with the leader of the "claque" the place for the plaudits,
pay for the triumphs of the last month in solid cash, and bespeak
those of the month ahead. In the days of Saint-Genest, the canonized
comedian who fulfilled his duties in a pious manner and wore a hair
shirt, we must suppose that an actor's life did not demand this
incessant activity. Sometimes Florine, seized with a bourgeois desire
to get out into the country and gather flowers, pretends to the
manager that she is ill.
But even these mechanical operations are nothing in comparison with
the intrigues to be carried on, the pains of wounded vanity to be
endured,--preferences shown by authors, parts taken away or given to
others, exactions of the male actors, spite of rivals, naggings of the
stage manager, struggles with journalists; all of which require
another twelve hours to the day. But even so far, nothing has been
said of the art of acting, the expression of passion, the practice of
positions and gesture, the minute care and watchfulness required on
the stage, where a thousand opera-glasses are ready to detect a flaw,
--labors which consumed the life and thought of Talma, Lekain, Baron,
Contat, Clairon, Champmesle.
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