Note 27 — Chapter VI

I doubt, moreover, whether a lesson of Samson to his pupils would have been as interesting to the outsider as one of Régnier's. Of all the gifts that go to the making of a great actor, Régnier 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, Régnier'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 Madame de Girardin's "La Joie fait peur,"[27] there is a scene which, as played by Régnier and Delaunay, looked to the spectator absolutely spontaneous. The smallest detail had been minutely regulated. It is where the old retainer, while dusting the room, is talking to himself about his young master, Lieutenant Adrien Desaubiers, who is reported dead.