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to reply. The naïve respect which this theatre rouses in me had just waved its red cape. In a flash I saw Mounet-Sully crossing the stage from right to left in the guise of the young Ruy Blas. He was old. His beard was white. Almost blind, his head sunken between his shoulders, he held a candelabrum. And his walk was the Spaniard’s.
    I saw de Max, with a hand covered in rings, shaking his black locks in the air and trailing his veils. I saw Madame Bartet, old bird without a neck, singing Andromache. I saw Madame Segond-Weber, in
Rodogune
, poisoned, and goose-stepping off the stage with her tongue out.
    All this was hardly likely to encourage a young man. And yet I hesitated to say to him: ‘refuse’. Once the receiver was hung up again, those superb old-stagers were still operative. Reason told me: ‘This actor has just made your film. He is acting in your play. He is to act in your next. He is in demand everywhere. He is highly paid. He is free.’ Unreason showed me the child that I had been, led to my Thursday seat by an attendant with a pink bow and a grey moustache, and Marais in that frame of gold, playing the part of Nero in which he is incomparable.
    That’s how I am, ensnared by charms. Swiftly dazzled. I belong to the moment. It falsifies my perspective. It puts a stopper on diversity. I give way to anyone who knows how toget round me. I take on responsibilities. I dawdle over them and miss the mark right and left. That is why solitude is good for me. It reunites my quicksilver.
    The sun which had been shining is veiled in mist. The motley families depart. The hotel empties and I can do my holiday tasks. Between two pages of writing I search for the title of my play. Now that it is finished the title eludes me. And the title
La Reine Morte
, which would suit it, troubles me greatly. My queen has no name. The pseudonym of Stanislas: Azraël, is suitable, but they tell me that this would be remembered as Israël. One title alone exists. It will be, so it is. Time conceals it from me. How discover it, covered by a hundred others? I have to avoid
the
this,
the
that. Avoid the image. Avoid the descriptive and the undescriptive. Avoid the exact meaning and the inexact. The soft, the hard. Neither long nor short. Right to catch the eye, the ear, the mind. Simple to read and to remember. I had announced several. I had to repeat them twice and the journalists still got them wrong. My real title defies me. It enjoys its hiding-place, like a child one keeps calling, and whom one believes drowned in the pond. *
    The theatre is a furnace. Whoever does not suspect this is consumed in the long run or else burns out at once. It damps one’s zeal. It attacks by fire and by water.
    The audience is a surging sea. It gives one nausea. This is called stage fright. It’s all very well to say to oneself: it’s the theatre, it’s the audience. It makes no difference. One makes up one’s mind not to be caught again. One returns. It’s theCasino. One stakes all one has. It’s exquisite torture. Anyone but a conceited ass goes through it. There is no cure.
    When I rehearse I become a spectator. I am bad at correcting faults. I love actors and they take me in. I listen to something other than myself. The night before the show my weaknesses stare me in the face. It is too late. Consequently, overcome by something very like sea-sickness, I stride up and down the ship, the bunkers, the cabins, the alleyways to the cabins. I dare not look at the sea. Still less dip into it. It seems to me that if I were to enter the auditorium I would sink the ship.
    Here am I then in the wings, straining my ears. Behind the set a play is no longer painted; it draws its own outline. It shows me its flaws in draughtsmanship. I go out. I go and lie down in the dressing-rooms. What my actresses leave there, when changing souls, creates an inevitable vacuum. I suffocate. I get up. I listen. Where have they got to? I listen at doors. Yet I know this sea