the woman and her beloved person: they seemed to him more beautiful
there than they were in himself--endowed with an antique and seemingly
eternal beauty. Intimacy with such a soul, so feminine, so weak and kind
and cruel, and genial in flashes, was a source of boundless wealth. She
taught him much about life, and men--about women, of whom he knew very
little, while she judged them with swift, unerring perception. But
especially he was indebted to her for a better understanding of the
theater; she helped him to pierce through to the spirit of that
admirable art, the most perfect of all arts, the fullest and most sober.
She revealed to him the beauty of that magic instrument of the human
dream,--and made him see that he must write for it and not for himself,
as he had a tendency to do,--(the tendency of too many artists, who,
like Beethoven, refuse to write "_for a confounded violin when the
Spirit speaks to them_").--A great dramatic poet is not ashamed to
work for a particular theater and to adapt his ideas to the actors at
his disposal: he sees no belittlement in that: but he knows that a vast
auditorium calls for different methods of expression than those
necessary for a smaller space, and that a man does not write
trumpet-blares for the flute. The theater, like the fresco, is art
fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art,
the living art.

Francoise's ideas were in accordance with Christophe's, who, at that
stage in his career, was inclined towards a collective art, in communion
with other men. Francoise's experience helped him to grasp the
mysterious collaboration which is set up between the audience and the
actor. Though Francoise was a realist, and had very few illusions, yet
she had a great perception of the power of reciprocal suggestion, the
waves of sympathy which pass between the actor and the multitude, the
great silence of thousands of men and women from which arises the single