morning I went away, and never set
eyes on him again until three weeks ago, when he left his card, asking
for an interview. He is a very intelligent man, and has profited by the
first lesson. During the three days he remained in Paris I gave him
three more. He says that if ever I get into a scrape, he'll do better
than defend me--prosecute me, and I'm sure to get off."

I have never seen Samson give a lesson at the Conservatoire, but I was
present at several of Regnier's, thanks to Auber, whom I knew very well,
and who was the director, and to Regnier himself, who did not mind a
stranger being present, provided he felt certain that the stranger was
not a scoffer. I believe that Samson would have objected without
reference to the stranger's disposition; at any rate, Auber hinted as
much, so I did not prefer my request in a direct form.

I doubt, moreover, whether a lesson of Samson to his pupils would have
been as interesting to the outsider as one of Regnier's. Of all the
gifts that go to the making of a great actor, Regnier had naturally only
two--taste and intelligence; the others were replaced by what, for want
of a better term, one might call the tricks of the actor; their
acquisition demanded constant study. For instance, Regnier's appearance
off the stage was absolutely insignificant; his voice was naturally
husky and indistinct, and, moreover, what the French call nasillarde,
that is, produced through the nose. His features were far from mobile;
the eyes were not without expression, but these never twinkled with
merriment nor shone with passion. Consequently, the smallest as well as
largest effect necessary to the interpretation of a character had to be
thought out carefully beforehand, and then to be tried over and over
again materially. Each of his inflections had to be timed to a second;
but when all this was accomplished, the picture presented by him was so
perfect as to deceive the most experienced critic, let alone an
audience, however intelligent. In fact, but for his own frank admission
of all this, his contemporaries and posterity would have been never the
wiser, for, to their honour be it said, his fellow-actors were so
interested in watching him "manipulate himself," as they termed it, as
to never breathe a word of it to the outside world. They all
acknowledged that they had learned something from him during rehearsal.
For instance, in one of his best-known characters, that of the old
servant in Madam