Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: were capable of being diverted by lighter themes than nature on the Ohio. The Theatre Franais was an absorbing pleasure to them, and divided them into camps according to their favourite actress. At one moment they are one and all enamoured of Mademoiselle Duchesnois, the rival of Napoleon's favourite, Mademoiselle Georges. Pauline, foremost in enthusiasm, sees her every night from M. Julien's box, and never rests till she gets the actress to take luncheon with her. " I find it impossible," she writes to Pasquier, "to forgive those who think her stupid" . . . (an allusion to Geoffroi, the critic and admirer of Mademoiselle Georges): " She talks little and uses few words. . . . The only thing one can do, is to find her sensitive chord." Soon after Chateaubriand's appearance, Duchesnois, though still the support of tragedy, found her glory eclipsed in the salon world by the rising star of Talma's genius. " Himself, his time, and antiquity," was Chateaubriand's summary of him. "He had," he continues, "the fatal inspiration, the disturbed genius of the Revolution through which he passed, and did not know the gentilhomme of the old society. His Othello smacked of Vendome . . . but his /2 , y -[ iCf(i.u,v grace, which was not the conventional grace, seized you like grief." Meanwhile, Chateaubriand was no less anxious than Pauline to produce his book — and under her auspices. For this purpose, she resolved to carry out an ideal plan of hers, and take some little cottage in the country, where they might give themselves up to work, uninterrupted save by the occasional visits of friends. They found what they wanted at Savigny, now only half an hour by rail from Paris, then much more inaccessible; and she began to arrange for their life together in Arcadia. Madame Joubert under...