My mother's death caused me a grief far more acute than most children, even a good deal older than I was then, are capable of feeling.

How well I remember being punished because I refused to act the part of one of Medea's children, the day after she died.

But my grief was not very long-lived--I was but a child after all, and the actors and actresses of the troupe were so good to me, always petting me, and devising all sorts of ways to please and divert me--theatrical people are proverbially kind to comrades in distress, you know.

The pedant, who belonged to our company, and looked just as old and wrinkled then as he does now, took the greatest interest in me, constituted himself my master, and taught me thoroughly and indefatigably all the secrets of the histrionic art--taking unwearied pains with me.

I could not have had a better teacher; perhaps you do not know that he has a great reputation, even in Paris.