RACHEL BN Scribe ; gave them excess of majesty. Her histrionic style was too exalted an ideal for the conventional characters of the drama of her own time ; it was even said of her that she could not speak its prose properly or tolerably. She disliked the hair-powder necessary to Adrienne Lecouvreur and Gabrielle de Belle Isle, although her beauty, for all its severity, did not lose picturesqueness in the cos- tumes of the time of Louis XV. As Gabrielle she was more girlish and gentle, pathetic, and tender, than was her wont, while the signal fervor of her speech addressed to Richelieu, beginning, " Vous mentez, Monsieur le Due," stirred the audience to the most excited applause. Rachel was seen upon the stage for the last time at Charleston on December 17, 1856. She played Adrienne Lecouvreur. She had been tempted to America by the prospect of extravagant profits. It had been dinned into her ears that Jenny Lind, by thirty-eight performances in America, had realized sev- enteen hundred thousand francs. Why might not she, Rachel, receive as much ? And then, she was eager to quit Paris. There had been strange worship there of Madame Ristori, even in the rejected part of Medea. But already Rachel's health was in a deplorable state. Her constitution, never very strong, had suf- fered severely from the cruel fatigues, the incessant exertions, she had undergone. It may be, too, that the deprivations and sufferings of her childhood now made themselves felt as over-due claims that could be no longer denied or deferred. She forced herself to play, in fulfilment of her engagement, but she was languid, weak, emaciated ; she coughed incessantly, her strength was gone ; she was dy- ing slowly but certainly of phthisis. And she appeared before an audience that applauded her, it is true, but cared nothing for Racine and Corneille, knew little of the French language, and were urgent that she should sing the " Marseillaise" as she had sung it in 1848 ! It was forgotten, or it was not known in America, that the actress had long since renounced revolutionary sentiments to espouse the cause of the Second Empire. She performed all her more important charac- ters, however, at New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Nor was the undertak- ing commercially disappointing, if it did not wholly satisfy expectation. She re- turned to France possessed of nearly three hundred thousand francs as her share of the profits of her forty-two performances in the United States ; but she returned to die. The winter of 1856 she passed at Cairo. She returned to France in the spring of 1857, Dut ner physicians forbade her to remain long in Paris. In Sep- tember she moved again to the South, finding her last retreat in the villa Sardou, at Cannet, a little village in the environs of Cannes. She lingered to January 3, 1858. The Theatre Francais closed its doors when news arrived of her death, and again on the day of her funeral. The body was embalmed and brought to Paris for interment in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, the obsequies being per- formed in accordance with the Jewish rites. The most eminent of the authors and actors of France were present, and funeral orations were delivered by MM. Jules Janin, Bataille, and Auguste Maquet. Victor Hugo was in exile ; or, as Janin announced, the author of " Angelo " would not have withheld the tribute of his eulogy upon the sad occasion. 34
