Here, in _Ma Cousine_, she abandons herself to all the frank and shady
humors of the thing with the absolute abandonment of the artist. It is
like a picture by Forain, made of the same material with the same
cynicism and with the same mastery of line.
_Ma Cousine_, on seeing it a second time, is frankly and not too
obviously amusing, a piece in which everybody plays at something, in
which Réjane plays at being an actress who has a part to act in real
life. "_Elle est impayable, cette Riquette!_" And it is with an
intensely conscious abandonment of herself that she renders this
good-hearted Cabotine, so worldly wise, so full of all the physical
virtues, turned Bohemian. She has, in this part, certain guttural and
nasal laughs, certain queer cries and shouts, which are after all a part
of her _métier_; she runs through her whole gamut of shrugs and winks
and nods. There is, of course, over again, the famous _Chahut_, in which
she summarizes the whole art of the Moulin-Rouge; there is her long
scene of pantomime, in which every gesture is at once vulgar and
distinguished, vulgarly rendered with distinction. There are other
audacities, all done with equal discretion.
I am not sure that Réjane is not at her best in this play: she has
certainly never been more herself in what one fancies to be herself.
There is all her ravishing gaminerie, her witty intelligence, her dash,
her piquancy, her impudence, her mastery. I find that her high spirits,
in this play, affect me like pathos: they run to a kind of emotion. I
compared her art with the art of Forain; I said that here was a picture,
made out of the same material, with the same cynicism, the same mastery
of line. She suggested, in her costume of the Second Act, a Beardsley
picture; there was the same kind of tragic grotesque, in which a kind of
ugliness became a kind of beauty. The whole performance was of the best
Parisian kind, with genius in one, admirably disciplined talent in all.