This old, bent, faithful retainer, a stock dramatic part, was
played by Regnier with the consummate art that is Nature itself staged.
He has hidden the returned son behind a curtain for fear that his
mother, seeing him unexpectedly, should die of joy. The sister comes in.
Humming, the servant begins to dust, to prevent her going near the
curtain; but unconsciously, in his delight, his humming grows louder and
louder, until, in a hymn of jubilation, tratara-tratara! he flings the
broom up over his head, then stops short suddenly, noticing that the
poor child is standing there, mute with astonishment, not knowing what
to think. Capital, too, was the acting of a now forgotten actress, Mlle.
Dubois, who played the young girl. Her exclamation, as she suddenly sees
her brother, "_Je n'ai pas peur, va_!" was uttered so lightly and
gaily, that all the people round me, and I myself, too, burst into
tears.
I was much impressed by Edmond Thierry, then director of the _Theatre
Francais_. I thought him the most refined man I had so far met,
possessed of all the old French courtesy, which seemed to have died out
in Paris. A conversation with him was a regular course in Dramaturgy,
and although a young foreigner like myself must necessarily have been
troublesome to him, he let nothing of this be perceptible.
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