LAST JOURNEY.
Rachel returned to Paris, and, on the 1st July 1857, ceased to belong officially to the Théâtre Français. In her letter of resignation she does not attempt to stipulate for any terms or continuance of her salary:—
À Monsieur Empis,
Administrateur Général de la Comédie Française,
J'ai le regret profond de vous annoncer que ma santé ne me permet pas d'esperer ma rentrée prochaine au Théâtre Français. J'accepterai donc ce que la comité decidera à l'égard de ma retraite.
The very brevity of this letter shows that Rachel herself looked upon it as a supreme farewell to her artistic career. It was accompanied by a doctor's certificate, to the effect that, although her health had improved, she could not reappear on the stage for some time, and must spend the winter in the south of France.
Meantime she quitted her hotel in the Rue Trudon, and established herself in an apartment in the Place Royale. "It is on the way to Père Lachaise," she said, with a smile, "and my friends will have more room here on the day of my funeral."
She wrote to a friend:—
I am very ill; I am on the eve of departure—not for another world, but for a warmer climate. My nervous system, as well as my bodily health, must be built up, if it is not too late. I feel a great darkness and void in my head and in my intelligence. All is suddenly extinguished, and Rachel has ceased to exist! Ah, poor Rachel! that Rachel of whom I was so proud—too proud, perhaps; nothing remains of her to-day! This letter is to bid you farewell, my friend, that farewell which the distance that separates us forbids us to say personally to one another.
What events have passed since our last meeting, and what a cruel voyage! I cannot speak of it without weeping. But how could I foresee its fatal ending? I was so certain of success. And this terrible disease—this shirt of Nessus that I cannot tear off! I trusted to my luck and my strength, and, without any precautions, undertook that terrible expedition to New York. Shall I return now—will God have pity on me, for the sake of my children, my friends, or will He take me to Himself?
Farewell, my friend! This letter will most likely be the last you will ever receive from me. You, who knew Rachel so brilliant, who saw her in her luxury and her splendour, who so often applauded her in her triumphs—you would find a difficulty in recognising her now in the skeleton that she drags about with her unceasingly.
Then comes the last letter written before her departure. It is addressed to Augustine Brohan, whom, we may imagine, touched by a temporary penitence for the many hard things she had said about Rachel during the days of comradeship at the Théâtre Français, had written a letter expressing sympathy with her rival in her present distress:—"Patience and resignation have become my motto. I am most grateful, dear Mademoiselle Brohan, for your amiable interest; but I am afraid God alone can help me now! I am leaving directly for the South. I hope the warmth and sunshine will calm my suffering."
Shortly after, she left for Le Cannet, where A. L. Sardou, the father of the famous dramatist, had offered her his villa The morning of her departure she expressed a wish to bid good-bye for the last time to the two theatres which had witnessed her period of probation and the glorious days of her triumphs. Jules Janin tells us:—
The day she quitted Paris she rose very early. When those around her suggested that she ought to rest as long as possible, she answered that she bad determined to pay a visit to the scenes connected with her earlier days, and that her family and friends might come to take leave of her at the station. She would listen to no remonstrance, and those about her remarked that for some time she had not displayed so much energy.
When she was dressed she entered her carriage, and gave orders to drive first to the Gymnase and then to the Français.
The morning (it was not quite six o'clock) was cold and misty. Not a sound was to be heard in the sleeping city, and the great theatre of the Rue Richelieu stood silent and deserted. The entrance and portico loomed faintly through the morning mist. The small side-door, where the child Rachel had knocked so often in vain with her little hand, thin and rigid with hunger and cold, was hardly visible. As she gazed, she must have lived over again all those days of varying sadness and joy, of depression and exultation, which are a portion of every actor's life. Slowly she turned away, bending forward to look at the walls of the theatre where she had awakened the echoes with the voice of Hermione, Camille, and Monime, and where she had made men and women tremble and weep as she chanted the "Marseillaise." When she reached the station, where her friends and relations waited to say the last words of parting, a parting that was to be eternal, she tried to walk from her carriage to the train, but was obliged to submit to be carried in a chair. She smiled once more at the crowd of sympathetic faces, then gently closed her eyes, as if that were the memory she wished to take with her.
Her life, thanks to the warm, dry air of Le Cannet, was prolonged until the mouth of January 1858, much longer than she herself expected. Towards the end of December, feeling her strength fail, she made a supreme effort. In one day she wrote seventeen letters, and prepared seventeen little boxes, filled with orange flowers; on the top of each she laid one of the letters. Émile de Girardin had his framed, and kept it as a precious heirloom:—
Je vous embrasse cette nouvelle année. Je ne pensais pas, cher ami, pouvoir encore, en 1858, vous envoyer ma sincère affection.
The doctor, who was called in at the last moment, has left an interesting account of these few hours before her death. On entering the sick-room, he saw that the phthisis had entered the third and last stage. Her face was as white as the pillow on which it lay; the voice was broken and weak. The spark of life still remaining seemed concentrated in the wondrous eyes; their expression was indescribable. She talked sensibly with those around her. "Ah, Sarah," she said to her sister, "I have been thinking of Polyeucte all night. If you only knew what new, what magnificent effects I have conceived! In studying, take my word for it, declamation and gesture are of little avail. You have to think, to weep."
On the 3rd of January 1858, at eleven o'clock in the evening, twenty-nine hours after the arrival of the doctor, she passed away. To the very last she was conscious of the presence of those she loved. When her hand was already cold in death, she stretched it towards them, seeking theirs, and, when her lips could no longer formulate a word, she made a sign of eternal farewell. She did not forget her duty, either, towards those dependent on her. She gave directions about her affairs, arranging every minute detail like a traveller starting on a long journey, rather than a person facing death. During the night of the 2nd and 3rd she dictated her will, until obliged to stop from fatigue. On the 3rd, at nine o'clock in the morning, she had a violent attack of suffocation. When the crisis was past, she began dictating again, beginning where she had left off the night before. She then read over the whole carefully, made some corrections, and, raising herself in bed, signed the document. Later she distributed some small souvenirs, one to everyone present, accompanying each with a word of gratitude and affection.
At ten o'clock in the evening there was another attack of suffocation, much more prolonged than the last. After an hour's struggle her eyes closed, an extreme pallor overspread her face, that intense suffering had suffused with colour for a moment. Sarah, frightened, called "Rachel!" and implored her sister to answer; but in vain. She felt her heart, her pulse; there was only the slightest flutter perceptible, vibrations of the life that was ebbing away. Rose, her attached and devoted servant, burst into tears and fell on her knees at the foot of her mistress's bed. A smile hovered on the lips of the dying woman. Some Israelite priests, whom Sarah had sent for to Nice, chanted the service for the dead:—
"Ascend to God, daughter of Israel. Behold, Lord, the sufferings of thy servant. Take pity on her; shorten her anguish, O God, and may those she has undergone make amends for her sins."
Rachel turned with a smile of ineffable tenderness to Sarah, murmuring indistinctly the words of Corneille in Les Horaces, "Albe, mon cher patrie et mon premier amour," and then the name of her sister Rebecca. Thus she passed to her rest.
It was not before the morning of the 5th January that the great actress's death was known at the Théâtre Français. Chatterton and the Voyage à Dieppe were to have been given that evening; the bills were already up, but were immediately replaced by others announcing the sad event and the closing of the theatre for the night. The Saturday following, the coffin arrived in Paris, and was placed in the apartment of the Rue Royale. On the 11th the funeral took place, and was attended by a crowd of all that was eminent in art or letters of the Paris of the day. The poor heart, lying still and cold, was saved one pang added to the many it had undergone. Her eldest son was absent, kept at school at Geneva, and knew nothing of his mother's death. When Count Walewski was asked if the boy were to attend the funeral, he said he did not think it necessary, and that it would cause the child a sad and disagreeable impression; so the young Alexander Antoine-Colonna, Viscount Walewski (for he was openly acknowledged), son of the first Minister of the Empire and the actress Rachel, was not chief mourner at his mother's funeral.
What need to recapitulate the panegyrics that were spoken over her grave? Jules Janin, Théophile Gautier, Paul de Saint Victor, all praised her in speeches it did not need any effort of oratory to render eloquent; for they were instinct with the warmth of artistic appreciation, and pathetic by reason of their deep and sincere regret. The words sobbed out by Dejazet, as she cast violets on her comrade's grave, "Pauvre femme! ah la pauvre femme!" are enough for us. They contain neither the condemnation of her enemies nor the praise of her friends, but they are pregnant with all the comprehensive pity of one who understood the difficulties and temptations of her sister artist's life.