had made. Like all great artists, she was always in direct communication with her audience, not a murmur or a movement escaped her. Like a delicately-strung instrument, feeling every breath of approval or displeasure, if her audience were less enthusiastic, less favourably disposed towards her, she understood it at once, and, by calling to her aid the wonderful resources of her energy and passion, had hitherto, when by long absences and grasping demands she had alienated their affections, conquered their ill-humour, and won them back to their allegiance. Now the syren was powerless; the charm was broken. Applause was given, but it was mechanical and cold. She entered her loge, overwhelmed with disappointment and despair. Jules Janin, who was present, describes the scene. Cowering in a corner of the green-room that was connected with some of the greatest triumphs of her career, she suddenly broke down, tears filled her eyes; and when an incautious friend tried to console her, she sobbed aloud, and, passionately tearing open her dress, said, "See! see how I am wasting away. It is a dying woman who weeps."
The shadow of death had indeed fallen on her. The following celebrated letter, written in 1855 to Émile de Girardin, shows how surely she felt the advances of the disease that killed her:—
