of the middle ages, or even becoming pedantic and
professorial herself; sometimes Yvette preaches or, still worse, permits
some one else, dancer, violinist, or singer to usurp her place on the
platform. These interruptions are sorry moments indeed but such lapses
are forgiven with an almost divine graciousness when Yvette interprets
another song. Then the dull or scholarly interpolations are forgotten.

I cannot, indeed, know where to begin to praise her or where to stop. My
feelings for her performances (which I have seen and heard whenever I
have been able during the past twelve years in Chicago, New York,
London, and Paris) are unequivocal. There are moments when I am certain
that her rendering of _La Passion_ is her supreme achievement and there
are moments when I prefer to see her as the unrestrained purveyor of the
art of the _chansonniers_ of Montmartre--unrestrained, I say, and yet
it is evident to me that she has refined her interpretations of these
songs, revived twenty-five years after she first sang them, bestowed on
them a spirit which originally she could not give them. From the
beginning _Ma Tete_, _La Soularde_, _La Glu_, _La Pierreuse_, and the
others were drawn as graphically as the pictures of Steinlen, but age
has softened her interpretation of them. What formerly was striking has
now become beautiful, what was always astonishing has become a
masterpiece of artistic expression. Once, indeed, these pictures were
sharply etched, but latterly they have been lithographed, drawn softly
on stone.... I have said that I do not know in what song, in what mood,
I prefer Yvette Guilbert. I can never be certain but if I were asked to
choose a programme I think I should include in it _C'est le Mai_, _La
Legende de St. Nicolas_, _Le Roi a Fait Battre Tambour_, _Les Cloches de
Nantes_, _Le Cycle du Vin_, _Le Lien Serre_, _La Glu_, _Lisette_, _La
Femme_, _Que l'Amour Cause de Peine_, and Oh, how many others!

All art must be beautiful, says Mme. Guilbert, and she has realized the
meaning of what might have been merely a phrase; no matter how sordid or
trivial her subject she has contrived to make of it something beautiful.
She is not, therefore, a realist in any literal signification of the
word (although I doubt if any actress on the stage can evoke more sense
of character than she) because she always smiles and laughs and weeps
with the women she represents; she sympathizes with them, she humanizes
them, where ano