At the age of fifteen Sarah was a thin, weedy, shock-headed girl, about five feet tall, but undeveloped. Her complexion was pale and dark rings under her eyes told the story of unconquered anÆmia. She had a chronic cough that would shake her thin body to paroxysms. She was extremely subject to colds and chills, and the slightest indisposition would send her to bed with fever. Doctors shook their heads over her and predicted that she would die of consumption before reaching the age of twenty.

Her anÆmia gave to her face a species of sombre beauty which was enlivened by the extraordinary play of expression in her eyes as she talked. Her features reflected every change of mood, and her moods were many. Judged by her face alone, she was not so much beautiful as striking. Character fairly leapt at one when she spoke.

Her character was a curious composite of morbidity, affection, talent and wilfulness. Her mother and her governess, Mlle. de Brabender, a probationer nun, were often reduced to despair by her temper, which seemed to grow worse as she became older. At other times, but more rarely, she was tractable to the point of docility.

Sarah’s first visit to the theatre was to the OpÉra-Comique. This great event occurred when she was slowly recovering from the illness which followed her expulsion from the Convent at Grandchamps. One day she was at her music lesson with Mlle. Clarisse, when her mother’s maid came to say that her presence was desired in the salon. There she found her mother, the Duc de Morny, and her younger sister Jeanne, who was never far from her mother’s side when the latter was in Paris.

Putting his hand on her curly head the Duke said:

“We have a great surprise for you.”

“A wonderful surprise,” added her mother.

Sarah clapped her hands excitedly. “I know—I know! You are going to let me enter the Convent—I am to be a nun!”

She was overwhelmed with joy; never doubted but that her fondest dream was to be made true.

“What is this?” demanded the Duke in amazement. “Our beautiful little Sarah wants to be a nun? And why do you wish to condemn yourself to that living death, may I ask?”

Living death! To the child, whose memories of the Convent were so recent, the life of a nun was a living joy—a joy of service, sacrifice and peace. To her restless, turbulent, almost exotic temperament the thought of the calm, well-ordered existence of the tranquil religieuses was a beautiful one, a sacred memory. She could not bear the harsh laughter with which her mother greeted the suggestion.

“Expelled from a convent and wants to be a nun!” said Julie, scornfully. She could never bring herself to believe that this amazingly complex creature was her own child.

“Hush!” commanded the Duke, frowning. “Now, my little one, my question is not answered. Why do you wish to be a nun?”

Sarah looked fearlessly at her mother’s protector. “The doctors say I am soon to die—I have heard them talk,” she said. “I would like to die with my soul dedicated to God.”

To Julie, who was still a Jewess, this was cause for further laughter; but the Duke, a man of much sentiment and some honour, was much affected.

“Nonsense!” he said. “You are not going to die for many years! The doctors are fools! We shall discharge them for idle talking.... No, my little one, the great surprise is not what you thought. We are going to take you to the OpÉra-Comique to see a play.”

Instead of the stammered thanks he expected, Sarah began to cry.

“I do not want to go to the OpÉra-Comique!” she cried, stamping her foot. “I won’t go! Mother Saint-Sophie (the superior at the Convent) said that the theatre was wicked. I do not want to be wicked: I want to be a nun!”

Threats and persuasion were both necessary before Sarah consented to don the new gown her mother had purchased for her and accompany her parent and the Duke to the latter’s box at the OpÉra-Comique.

This theatre was then in the Place du Chatelet, and little did the child dream, as she entered it, that twenty-five years later she herself would lease it from the city and call it the “ThÉÂtre Sarah Bernhardt”—which is its name to-day. Thus, the last theatre in which she acted was also that in which she saw her first play.

Sarah fell an immediate victim to the theatre. The piece she saw that night—Sarah herself did not remember its name—held her enthralled. It was necessary for her companions to drag her away after the curtain had fallen on the last act.

She had been transported to a new world, an unreal sphere of delight. For days, for weeks thereafter she spoke of little else. She besieged her mother with demands to be taken to the theatre again. The latter, however, was too wrapped up in her own pleasure-loving life to take much heed in the desires of her wilful daughter.

One day Sarah went off to the art school, where she was learning to paint—her ambition to become a nun was almost forgotten now, and she would spend feverish hours in preparation for the career she was convinced was ahead of her as a great portrait-painter—and did not return until the next morning.

All that night searchers hunted throughout the city for the truant; the police were informed and it was even suggested that the Seine should be dragged, for it was remembered that to come home from the art school, which it was ascertained she had left at the usual hour, it was necessary for her to cross the Pont Neuf.

At nine o’clock the next morning a tired, sleepy and very dirty Sarah returned to her mother’s flat and, in reply to a storm of questions and reproaches from her almost frantic mother, explained that she had spent the night in the OpÉra-Comique.

She had gone there direct from her art school and had succeeded in entering the theatre unobserved. Hiding under a seat in one of the galleries, she had waited until the play began and had then appropriated a chair. After the play, seized with panic, she was afraid to go out with the rest of the audience and had hidden herself again, only leaving when the doors were opened to the cleaners in the morning.

After that the Duke gave her regular tickets for the theatre, and she saw many plays. Frequently she would visit the same theatre a dozen times, learn several of the parts by heart and surprise her friends by reciting them.

It was at this period of her life that Sarah began to have friends of the opposite sex, but she assured me that she loved none of them.

“I had no foolishness of that kind in my head!” she told me on one occasion. “My mother’s house was always full of men, and the more I saw of them the less I liked them.

“I was not a very companionable child. I had few girl friends and fewer male acquaintances, but these latter were assiduous in their attempts to make me like them.

“The first man who asked me to marry him was a wealthy tanner’s son, a young fellow of twenty who was earning forty francs a week in his father’s establishment, but who expected to be rich one day.

“His father used to frequent my mother’s house and one day he brought his son with him. I was sent for to complete the party and, though I was haughty and kept the young fellow at a distance, I could see that I had made a conquest.

“He came again and again, and would waylay me on my journey to and from the art school, insisting on carrying my books. I did not dislike him, for he was a handsome, earnest young man, but neither did I like him particularly; and when he capped his attentions by asking me to marry him I laughed in his face. He went away vowing revenge. “That night my mother came into my bedroom and asked me whether the tanner had not proposed that day.

“‘Yes, mother,’ I said.

“‘And you accepted him?’

“I gave her a look of horror. ‘Accept him?’ I cried. ‘But no, of course I did not accept him! I do not love him—that is one reason——’

“‘It is a poor reason,’ said my mother angrily. ‘Do you suppose I wish you on my hands for ever? Are you never going to marry? Your sisters are growing up and soon they will marry and you will be left, an ugly vieille fille! Love always comes after marriage!’

“‘I do not care,’ I persisted, ‘I will not marry your tanner! He has large ears and his teeth are bad and he cannot talk. I will not marry him, and if he comes here again I shall slap his face!’

“My mother was angrier than I had ever seen her. ‘Very well, then, you shall do as you like! I wash my hands of you!’ she exclaimed, and left me.

“I burst into a storm of tears and cried half the night. What a lonely child I was! My only friends were Madame GuÉrard, who was under the domination of my mother, and Mlle. de Brabender, a timid soul, who would fondle and talk to me affectionately when we were alone, but who was afraid to open her mouth in the presence of my lovely mother.”

The tanners—father and son—ceased to frequent the Van Hard house, and for a long while Julie did not speak to her daughter except formally. To make up for it, she was tremendously and ostentatiously affectionate with her two other daughters, Jeanne and RÉgine, who had been born four years previously.

RÉgine had a childhood somewhat similar to that of Sarah; that is to say, she was bundled from here to there, never nursed by her mother, alternately the recipient of cuffs and kisses, and from the age of three left pretty much to her own sweet devices. It is not to be wondered at that she grew into a perfect terror of a child.

At the time of which we are writing now, RÉgine was forbidden the reception rooms of the house, and spent most of her time in Sarah’s room. Sarah became her nurse and teacher, and this relationship continued until, fourteen years later, RÉgine died.

Julie Van Hard had become a fashionable personage in Paris, owing to her relationship with the Duc de Morny, who was then one of the most powerful men in France. The Duke kept her plentifully supplied with money, and her gowns were the rage of Paris.

Beautiful, of commanding stature, her glossy reddish-gold hair without a streak of grey in it, Julie was an idol to be worshipped by the youthful dilettantes of the gay city. No reception, no first night at a theatre, was complete without the presence of Julie Van Hard.

Dressmakers besieged her to wear their gowns for nothing, in return for the advertisement she gave them. It was Julie Van Hard, mother of Sarah Bernhardt, who launched the famous Second Empire style of tightly-wound sleeves, with lace cuffs, square dÉcolletÉ and draped gowns with long trains. She was a great coquette, and almost certainly the Duc de Morny was not the only recipient of her favours. Julie Van Hard’s home was spacious, and was invariably filled with visitors. There was a dinner or an entertainment of some kind every night. Gathered in the two gorgeously-decorated salons one would see such people as Sarah’s two aunts, Rosine Berendt and Henriette Faure; Paul RÉgis, who stood as her godfather at Sarah’s baptism; General PolhÉs, an old friend of Julie’s and godfather of RÉgine; Madame de GuÉrard, Count de Larry, Duc de Morny, Count de Castelnau, Albert Prudhomme, Viscomte de NouÉ, Comte de Larsan, Comte de Charaix, General de la ThurmeliÈre, Augustus LÉvy the playwright, Vicomte de Gueyneveau, and many others.

Sarah seldom appeared at the parties in which these people figured. Their activities did not interest her. She had refused to continue with her piano studies, to the great disappointment of her mother, who was an accomplished pianiste.

“I have always hated the piano!” Sarah told me once in 1890. “I think it is because Mlle. Clarisse, my teacher, used to rap me on the fingers with a little cane she carried to mark the tempo. Whenever I hit a false note, down would come the cane, and then I would fly into a fury, charge the poor lady like a small tigress and try to pull her hair out. She did not remain to teach me very long and she was never replaced!”

The next candidate to Sarah’s hand was a worthy glove-maker, named Trudeau. He was wealthy, as wealth was counted then, and while not precisely the son-in-law Julie would have wished, he would doubtless have been welcome enough in the family had he succeeded in breaking down the barriers Sarah had erected before her heart.

Sarah’s chief objection to Trudeau was that he was too fat. Then, again, he was smooth-shaven, and it was accounted very ugly in those days not to have a moustache. Clean-shaven men, on entering a theatre, would often receive a jeering reception from the audience. The hirsute fashion of that period was long side-whiskers, a short, double-pointed beard, and a pointed, waxed moustache.

Julie did not urge her daughter to marry Trudeau. She probably knew that any such effort would have been doomed to failure from the start. Trudeau, however, laid determined siege to the young girl for several months, during which he sent her, among other expensive gifts, a brooch of the sort that was afterwards known as a “la ValliÈre.” This brooch was among those recently sold by auction in Paris.

To all his many proposals of marriage, however, Sarah turned a deaf ear. She would taunt him about his figure, which was short and broad, and above all she would jeer at his lack of a moustache.

“Never will I marry a man who cannot grow hair on his face!” she once declared.

He persisted, until one day Sarah called him a “fat old pig” and threw the contents of a glass of champagne in his face. Then he accepted his congÉ, and went out of Sarah’s life for ever.

Following Trudeau came a chemist, who had a shop at the corner of the Boulevard and the rue de la MichodiÈre. He had been captivated by the red-haired long-legged youngster who used to come to him to have prescriptions filled. I do not recall the name of this man, but I know that when Sarah refused him he consoled himself less than a month later by marrying a widow. Years later Sarah broke a parasol over his head, when he refused to promise not to supply her sister Jeanne with morphine.

After that a succession of young men unsuccessfully petitioned for her hand. In a space of two years she had nearly a dozen proposals, all of which she refused with equal disdain. She was becoming a noteworthy character in Paris herself, but she, the child, was of course eclipsed by the brilliant beauty of her mother.

These suitors came from all classes and conditions of society. At least one—the Vicomte de Larsan, a young fop whose father was a frequenter of Julie’s house—was of noble birth and heir to a considerable fortune. He was twenty-two years of age, and when he asked her to marry him, Sarah slapped his face.

I had many long talks with Sarah about these early romantic episodes. She loved to repeat reminiscences of her girlhood and she had an astounding memory.

As far back as 1892, she told me that in her life she had received more than a thousand proposals of marriage, and that she could remember the name and the date of every one of them!

I was curious about these thousand proposals of marriage, and often tried to get her to give me the names. But she said that to do so might cause harm to some of the men concerned, many of whom were then happily married, and had children. She told me of many episodes, however, in which such secrecy was not necessary, and these episodes will be found in detail later in this book.

“In my teens I cared nothing for men—they disgusted me!” she said. “I was called a great little beauty, and men used to kneel at my feet and swear that they would jump in the Seine if I refused them. I invariably told them to go and do so! “I was indifferent to all men. My mother’s flat at 22, rue de la MichodiÈre, which had been beautifully furnished by the Duc de Morny, was full of men visitors from early afternoon until late at night. I would keep out of their way as much as possible, and once I ran away for three days, because one of my mother’s admirers persisted in making revolting proposals to me.

“Finally I returned one day from the painting school and found my mother and the servant out and P—— installed in the salon. Before I could escape, he had seized me and covered me with kisses. They were the first love-kisses I had ever received, and I was not to give one for years afterwards.

“I struggled violently, bit him on the chin and scratched his face frightfully, but I was a weak child and he would have overpowered me eventually had not the door opened and my mother, followed by the Duc de Morny, come in. Neighbours had heard my screams and were congregated outside the door. My mother was white with passion.

“The Duke challenged P—— to a duel in secret, his rank preventing him from making the affair a public one. The duel was never fought, however, for P—— left that night for his home near Arcachon, and a few months later I heard he had been killed in a coaching accident near Tours.

“The Vicomte de Larsan was the most persistent suitor, after P——, and he was only a boy. I could not bear the sight of him, with his rouged cheeks, his scented hands, his powdered hair and his shirts covered with expensive lace. He used to wait outside the house for hours until I came out, and would make fervent declarations of love in the street. I grew to hate him, and I told him so! “But at that time I hated nearly all men, except the Duc de Morny. That nobleman was my mother’s most faithful protector, and he gave her large sums, which helped to pay for my education and my art lessons. He used to predict a great future for me. Not only did he stand sponsor for me for the Versailles convent but also procured my entrance into the Conservatoire.

“Many people in those days thought that I was the Duke’s natural daughter, and the legend has persisted. It was not true, though, for when I was born my mother was in exceedingly humble circumstances, and she did not meet the Duke—a meeting which changed her fortunes—until several years later.”