In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Read Online Free PDF Page B

imagine; but
she did not attain to the heights which Œnone or Aricie would
naturally have reached, she planed down into a uniform flow of melody
the whole of a passage in which there were mingled together
contradictions so striking that the least intelligent of tragic
actresses, even the pupils of an academy, could not have missed their
effect; besides which, she ran through the speech so rapidly that it
was only when she had come to the last line that my mind became aware
of the deliberate monotony which she had imposed on it throughout.
    Then, at last, a sense of admiration did possess me, provoked by the
frenzied applause of the audience. I mingled my own with theirs,
endeavouring to prolong the general sound so that Berma, in her
gratitude, should surpass herself, and I be certain of having heard
her on one of her great days. A curious thing, by the way, was that
the moment when this storm of public enthusiasm broke loose was, as I
afterwards learned, that in which Berma reveals one of her richest
treasures. It would appear that certain transcendent realities emit
all around them a radiance to which the crowd is sensitive. So it is
that when any great event occurs, when on a distant frontier an army
is in jeopardy, or defeated, or victorious, the vague and conflicting
reports which we receive, from which an educated man can derive little
enlightenment, stimulate in the crowd an emotion by which that man is
surprised, and in which, once expert criticism has informed him of the
actual military situation, he recognises the popular perception of
that 'aura' which surrounds momentous happenings, and which
may be visible hundreds of miles away. One learns of a victory either
after the war is over, or at once, from the hilarious joy of one's
hall porter. One discovers the touch of genius in Berma's acting a
week after one has heard her, in the criticism of some review, or else
on the spot, from the thundering acclamation of the stalls. But this
immediate recognition by the crowd was mingled with a hundred others,
all quite erroneous; the applause came, most often, at wrong moments,
apart from the fact that it was mechanically produced by the effect of
the applause that had gone before, just as in a storm, once the sea is
sufficiently disturbed, it will continue to swell, even after the wind
has begun to subside. No matter; the more I applauded, the better, it
seemed to me, did Berma act. "I say," came from a woman sitting near
me, of no great social pretensions, "she fairly gives it you, she
does; you'd think she'd do herself an injury, the way she runs about.
I call that acting, don't you?" And happy to find these reasons for
Berma's superiority, though not without a suspicion that they no more
accounted for it than would for that of the Gioconda or of Benvenuto's
Perseus a peasant's gaping "That's a good bit of work. It's all gold,
look! Fine, ain't it?", I greedily imbibed the strong wine of this
popular enthusiasm. I felt, all the same, when the curtain had fallen
fer the last time, disappointed that the pleasure for which I had so
longed had been no greater, but at the same time I felt the need to
prolong it, not to depart for ever, when I left the theatre, from this
strange life of the stage which had, for a few hours, been my own,
from which I should be tearing myself away, as though I were going
into exile, when I returned to my own home, had I not hoped there to
learn a great deal more about Berma from her admirer, to whom I was
indebted already for the permission to go to Phèdre , M. de Norpois.
I was introduced to him before dinner by my father, who summoned me
into his study for the purpose. As I entered, the Ambassador rose,
held out his hand, bowed his tall figure and fixed his blue eyes
attentively on my face. As the foreign visitors who used to be
presented to him, in the days when he still represented France abroad,
were all more or less (even the famous singers) persons of note, with
regard to whom he could