EVA LAVALLIERE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 136, 5 December 1929, Page 17

EVA LAVALLIERE

Eva Lavalliere, the ex-actress, who died recently at Vittel, was a-figure who represented.a whole period of the boulevard. She was a gifted performer, brilliant and versatile. Kings and princes vied to kiss her hands. Then came the war. There were all sorts of rumours. She had been shot as a spy. She' had gone into a convent. The last rumour was almost true, for it was only her failing health which prevented her adopting the severe rule of the Carmelites. She retired absolutely from the worl& and devoted the rest of her life to prayer; for she had found religion. .- She spent a year nursing the sipk on the borders of the desert in Tunis. She afterwards lived, first near her native Toulon, and then in a village a few ■ miles : from Vittel, where she died, . physically broken by illness and by pain,. but spiritually exalted. She is even said to have foreseen the day and'hour of her death. It was here that Robert de Flcrs persuaded her, five years ago, to break, in his favour, her rule of receiving nobody. "I have found God through the devil,-" she said to the man whose plays she had brilliantly interpreted. •