wicked ease and mastery of charm. It speaks to the senses through the
brain, as much as to the brain through the senses. It is the feminine
equivalent of intellect. It "magnetises our poor vertebrae," in
Verlaine's phrase, because it is sex and yet not instinct. It is sex
civilised, under direction, playing a part, as we say of others than
those on the stage. It calculates, and is unerring. It has none of the
vulgar warmth of mere passion, none of its health or simplicity. It
leaves a little red sting where it has kissed. And it intoxicates us by
its appeal to so many sides of our nature at once. We are thrilled, and
we admire, and are almost coldly appreciative, and yet aglow with the
response of the blood. I have found myself applauding with tears in my
eyes. The feeling and the critical approval came together, hand in hand:
neither counteracted the other: and I had to think twice, before I could
remember how elaborate a science went to the making of that thrill which
I had been almost cruelly enjoying.

The art of Réjane accepts things as they are, without selection or
correction; unlike Duse, who chooses just those ways in which she shall
be nature. What one remembers are little homely details, in which the
shadow, of some overpowering impulse gives a sombre beauty to what is
common or ugly. She renders the despair of the woman whose lover is
leaving her by a single movement, the way in which she wipes her nose.
To her there is but one beauty, truth; and but one charm, energy. Where
nature has not chosen, she will not choose; she is content with whatever
form emotion snatches for itself as it struggles into speech out of an
untrained and unconscious body. In "Sapho" she is the everyday "Venus
toute entière à sa proie attachée," and she has all the brutality and
all the clinging warmth of the flesh; vice, if you will, but serious
vice, vice plus passion. Her sordid, gluttonous, instructed eyes, in
which all the passions and all the vices have found a nest, speak their