The Ways of Men

legraphed an invitation to pass the day with her, naming the train she could meet, which would allow for the long drive to her chateau before luncheon. It is needless to

rmation in the woman at my side. Was this gray-clad, nunlike figure the passionate, sensuous Carmen of Bizet's masterpiece? Could that c

ge. Here I'm myself. Everywhere else I'm different. On the stage I am any part I may be playing, but am never really happy away from my hill t

onics were of benefit. I grew weaker day by day, until the doctors began to despair of my life. Finally, at the advice of an old woman here who passes for being something of a curer, I tried the experiment or lying five or six hours a day motionless in the sunlight. It wasn't long before I fel

g along the Languedoc road drew, on nearing her resi

by little girl with tomato-colored cheeks and tousled dark hair, remarking, "I looked like that twenty years ago and performed just those antics on this

stinct of the French peasant, Madame Calvé, when fortune came to her, bought and partially restored the rambling chateau which at sunset casts its shadow across the village of her bir

hen, that wing completed, a Paris train brought the first occupants for my twenty little bedrooms; no words can tell the delight it gives me now to see the color coming back to m

tion into gayer channels. Five minutes later we clattered over a drawbridge and drew up in a roomy courtya

rushing and washing, we took our places at a long table set in the cool stone hall, guests stoppin

asant women who waited on us were not more simple in their ways. Several times during the meal she left her seat to inquire after the comfort of some invalid girl or inspect the cooking in the adjacent kitchen. These wander

that a number of Venetian nobles were planning to carry me in triumph to the hotel. When I descended from my dressing-room the courtyard of the theatre was filled with men in dress clothes, bearing lanterns, who caught up the chair a

nt!' In blank amazement, I asked what he meant. 'I mean the triumphal progress,' he answered. 'I thought you understood! We always organize one for the "stars" who visit Venice. The men who carried your chair last night were the waiters from the hotels. We hire them on account of

such a joke upon themselves? Another story she t

stonishment the performance was received in complete silence. 'Poor Calvé,' I heard an old friend of my mother's murmur. 'Her voice used to be so nice, and now it's all gone!' Taking in the situation at a glance, I threw my voice well up into my nose and started

took those who cared for the excursion across the valley to inspect the ruins of a Roman bath. A late dinner brought us together again in a small dining room, the convalescents having eaten their simple meal and disappeared an hour be

ry, not even the "divine Sarah," Calvé giving us an unpayable impersonation of the elderly tragédienne as Lorenzaccio, the boy hero of Alfred de Musset's drama. Burlesquing led to her dancing some Spanish steps with an abandon never attempted on the stage! Which in turn gave place to an imitation of an Amer

A journalist en route for Paris was soon installed with me in the little omnibus that was to take us to the

o a row of closed windows overhead. "Isn't it a lesson," he said, "for all of us, to think of the occupants of those little rooms, whom