for that. It is an art concerned, for the most part, with all that part
of life which the conventions were intended to hide from us. We see a
world where people are very vicious and very unhappy; a sordid,
miserable world which it is as well sometimes to consider. It is a side
of existence which exists; and to see it is not to be attracted towards
it. It is a grey and sordid land, under the sway of "Eros vanné"; it is,
for the most part, weary of itself, without rest, and without escape.
This is Yvette Guilbert's domain; she sings it, as no one has ever sung
it before, with a tragic realism, touched with a sort of grotesque
irony, which is a new thing on any stage. The _rouleuse_ of the Quartier
Bréda, praying to the one saint in her calendar, "Sainte Galette"; the
_soûlarde_, whom the urchins follow and throw stones at in the street;
the whole life of the slums and the gutter: these are her subjects, and
she brings them, by some marvellous fineness of treatment, into the
sphere of art.

It is all a question of _métier_, no doubt, though how far her method is
conscious and deliberate it is difficult to say. But she has certain
quite obvious qualities, of reticence, of moderation, of suspended
emphasis, which can scarcely be other than conscious and deliberate. She
uses but few gestures, and these brief, staccato, and for an immediate
purpose; her hands, in their long black gloves, are almost motionless,
the arms hang limply; and yet every line of the face and body seems
alive, alive and repressed. Her voice can be harsh or sweet, as she
would have it, can laugh or cry, be menacing or caressing; it is never
used for its own sake, decoratively, but for a purpose, for an effect.
And how every word tells! Every word comes to you clearly, carrying
exactly its meaning; and, somehow, along with the words, an emotion,
which you may resolve to ignore, but which will seize upon you, which
will go through and through you. Trick or instinct, there it is, the