“ACT III., _Monte Carlo_.—Léna is staying there with Ramsey, with whom she is now desperately in love. Fortinbras appears and asks for money, which she gives. Ramsey comes in and asks why she is agitated. She says she is helpless, alone. He confesses his love for her, and she, in a nervous excitement, says, “Je t’adore,” and so scheming to marry for money, she finds she is dreadfully in love with him.
“ACT IV.—They are married and in Scotland. Fortinbras appears tracked by detectives and asks for 200,000 (pounds or francs?) at once, or he tells of her _passé_. Then Sarah Bernhardt was superb. It was quite impossible for her to get the money, and she is so happy with her husband. At this crisis Ramsey comes in and half strangles Fortinbras, who, when let go, reveals all Léna’s past. At the words, ‘Cette femme m’aimait une fois,’ Léna _jette un cri d’angoisse_, I would have given anything for you to have seen her act that scene. Ramsey hears it all, and, when given the proofs that are in letters, throws them into the fire, and Fortinbras is given to the detectives and Ramsey is alone with Léna and tells her that he really believes what the man said. She cannot deny it, and confesses the whole thing. Her acting was supreme, and Ramsey says to her, ‘Et m’avez vous jamais aimé?’ Then she gives way and bursts into _sanglots_, and implores him to believe her, and that she adored him. He refuses to believe her and goes out. Then all is pantomime. She takes up a knife, throws it down, gets a little bottle of ‘morphine,’ drinks it, sits down with Ramsey’s photograph in her hand; then come seven minutes of silence. All pantomime, but what pantomime; she quietly dies. I have never seen such a splendid bit of acting. It was lovely. As she is dying, Ramsey tries to come in, but the door is locked. He comes in at the window in an agony of grief and forgives her. Just when he is at the door she stretches out her hand and falls back _épuisée_. It was beautiful.”
I remember a doctor saying, as we went out of the theatre: “Mais ce n’est pas comme cela qu’on meurt de la morphine,”—upon which someone else answered: “Alors, ceux qui ont dit: Voilà une mort réaliste ont dit une sottise. Pourtant elle a été dite.”