Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part II - III
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166 THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL
out garment, treated like an idiot, considered of no more
importance than a footman or a dog.
But although her second appearance had been a failure,
she was engaged with a pay of 2,400 crowns ^ per annum.
She had acquitted herself fairly well, but she had no
great career before her. She would never rise above the
level of a "useful actress " ; she would be cast for small
parts, society women, mere dressed-up dolls, and spend
her days at the dressmaker’s. Three, four, sometimes
five different dresses on one and the same evening would
swallow up her insufficient pay.
What bitter disappointments, what heart-rending
scenes, as she watched her parts grow smaller and smaller,
until they consisted of a few sentences only. Her room
had the appearance of a dressmaker’s workshop, littered
Avith dress materials, patterns and millinery. The mother,
the real grande dame who had left her drawing-rooms,
renounced dress and fashion, to devote her life to a
lofty ideal of art, had become a bungling seamstress
who worked at her sewing machine till midnight, so that
she might play before an indifferent bourgeoisie for a few
minutes the part of a society Avoman.
The waste of time behind the scenes during rehearsal,
when she stood in the wings for hours waiting for her
cue which should bring her before the footlights to say
two or three words, developed in her a taste for gossip,
for idle talk and risky stories ; it killed all honest striving
to rise above her condition ; the soul was shorn of its
wings and was flung to earth, into the gutter.
The disintegrating process went on. She continued to
deteriorate, and after her dresses had been remodelled
again and again for want of means to buy new ones, she
was deprived of even her small parts and degraded to the
rôle of a walker on. Poverty was staring her in the face,
and her mother, a modern Cassandra, made life a burden
^ A Swedish crown is equivalent to 1#, id.
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