Out of a multitude of aspiring actresses Sarah Bernhardt, at the age of twenty-four, had jumped into celebrity practically in a single night. The success of Kean continued; the theatre was packed night after night. Berton, hitherto the greatest figure on the stage of the OdÉon, himself had to bow before the woman whose genius he had been the first to perceive.

Their intimacy continued, though necessarily in secret, on account of Berton’s other attachments. Success turned Sarah’s shock head a little, but for many months she remained faithful to the loyal man who had befriended her and had made her victory possible. Their idyll was the talk of the theatre. No one then dreamed how bitterly she would turn against him in later years.

She had no lack of other admirers. They flocked round her. There was Jules Garnier, and most notable of all perhaps FranÇois CoppÉe, whose genius Sarah discovered in an odd way.

She was dining in the house of a friend and was introduced to a small, pale-faced young man, whose wealth of dark hair was smoothed back from his brow. “He had,” Sarah told me later, “the eyes of a dreamer and the head of a saint.”

CoppÉe shyly shook her hand, and seemed to want to say something, but to be too bashful.

“Come, FranÇois,” urged Madame Agar, the great tragÉdienne, who was the hostess, “you have been wanting to meet Mlle. Bernhardt for weeks, and now that you have the chance you are dumb!”

“He has written a play,” she explained to Sarah, “and he thinks that you should be the one to play in it.”

“It was written for you,” said the young poet, simply.

FranÇois CoppÉe was then unknown, and Sarah had never heard his name before. But the subtle compliment of writing a play round her touched her heart, and she determined to grant him his wish.

“We will hear it at once!” she decided.

Two hours later she had enthusiastically promised to make Duquesnel and Chilly produce the piece, which was called Le Passant, and within four months it was produced at a benefit matinÉe. Then, after it had proved an enormous success, it was included in the regular OdÉon repertoire, which it has never since left.

If Kean had been a triumph for Sarah, Le Passant was a vindication. There had been many to hint that her success in Kean was only an accident due to fortuitous circumstances and to the fact that she was popular with the students who thronged the theatre on the first night. But when she carried all before her in Le Passant, she proved herself to be the great actress that she really was.

Every critic except the dour Francisque Sarcey, who still persisted in ignoring her talent, joined in an enthusiastic chorus of praise, and they said much more about her than they did about Agar, who was in reality the star of the piece.

Duquesnel was triumphant; Chilly was delighted. They had found another star worthy of the greatness of their theatre. They were summoned to play Le Passant at Court, in the magnificent setting of the Tuileries. The Emperor Louis Napoleon, after the performance, descended from his throne and kissed Sarah on both cheeks, afterwards presenting her with a diamond brooch set with the Imperial initials.

This brooch was not among the property of the tragÉdienne which was recently sold by auction in Paris, and I believe there was a story that, pressed for funds during a trip to London after the revolution, she pawned it and never subsequently regained possession of it. She was like that all her life. Always the desperate need for money, always the large extravagance, the royal expenditures that she could not afford!

This was the age of literary giants. Neither politics, nor even religion, had half the power to stir the passions of the educated masses that a literary war between two editors or two dramatists possessed. The two great rivals for public popularity were Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas the elder, and there was a deal of fanaticism in the fervour of their respective partisans. Public meetings were held denouncing one or the other. Victor Hugo’s political martyrdom was of recent memory, and this gentle character, this splendid genius, was the prey of attacks which were at once unscrupulous and false. Newspapers were started by chiefs of the different literary factions, and dozens of duels, some of them mortal, resulted from the wanton attacks on the reputations of two of the greatest men of the time.

Sarah’s first meeting with Victor Hugo occurred about a week after the premiÈre of Le Passant, in which she took the adolescent male rÔle of Zanetto. It suited her to perfection, for she had retained her boyish slimness and her general allure of gaminerie.

After the performance she was presented to Hugo, who had been watching the play from the depths of a loge. Public opinion was running high in Paris at the moment, and it was considered inadvisable that either Victor Hugo or Alexandre Dumas should show themselves in public.

Sarah had ignorantly allowed herself to be carried away by the fulminations of the Dumas clique at the OdÉon, and actually shuddered when she held her hand out to Hugo to be kissed.

“Ah, mademoiselle,” remarked the great author, with a sad smile, “I see that my greatest trial is to come in your prejudice against me!”

Sarah was touched, and could not bring herself to believe that this meek man, with the deep marks of suffering about his eyes, was really the monster his enemies would have the world believe. It was currently rumoured that Hugo was an anarchist, that he had deserted his wife, that he had five mistresses at one and the same time, and that his life consisted of one immorality after another. He was accused of many political crimes also—and with as much reason.

“I am my own judge of men, monsieur,” said Sarah.

Victor Hugo bowed low, muttered a word of adieu and later wrote Sarah as follows:

“Mademoiselle,

“Yesterday I was presented to you, trembling lest you might not accede to my request and play in my Ruy Blas. But I was tongue-tied in the presence of your beauty and your charity; I, who am a man of words, was dumb. I pray you, see Chilly; he knows my wishes. Believe, mademoiselle, in my sincere admiration,

“Victor Hugo.”

Sarah saw Chilly, only to be informed by him that it had been decided to put off the revival of Ruy Blas until the following season. Instead, when Le Passant was finished, Sarah played as star in three plays which definitely established her position as one of the greatest actresses of the period. These plays were L’Autre, a delicious comedy by Georges Sand, Le BÂtard and Theuriet’s Jean Marie.

Before she could play Ruy Blas, the war of 1870 broke out.

Before we go into the war experiences of Sarah Bernhardt, experiences which, moreover, forged her character, into a species of flexible steel, two episodes must be mentioned which have been published before, but which, in my opinion, have been scurrilously misinterpreted. One refers to the fire in her flat in the rue Auber, near the Opera, and the other to the serious illness that followed one of Sarah’s everlasting practical jokes—which this time took the form of trying to make the world believe that she was dead!

Sarah had, as before stated, taken a seven-room flat in the rue Auber which, with the aid of certain of her family, who were now only too willing to resume their relationship with her, she had somewhat luxuriously furnished. That in this connection she went heavily into debt to various furniture dealers, decorators and the like I do not doubt, for such became her invariable practice in later life. From the day she jumped into fame, she was invariably surrounded by dealers anxious to sell her all sorts of things, from jewelry to houses, and from pianos to horses and carriages. These men knew that her salary at the OdÉon was still only 160 francs per month, on which she could certainly barely afford an attic. They knew also that the income she received from her father’s estate had been greatly diminished, and was now less than 200 francs monthly.

With less than 500 francs—twenty pounds—a month, and with the inevitable extra expenses incidental to her career, what could Sarah Bernhardt be expected to afford? Her mother could spare her nothing. Her aunt Rosine, in an effort to placate the girl for the many slights of childhood, had given her two ponies and a smart little carriage, but this, at the same time, cost a good deal to keep up. None of her other relatives gave her anything. When she appealed to them they would say: “Why do you ask us? You are a famous actress, and famous actresses can always have money!”

How true that was, Sarah had early found out. I do not think it was any particular regard for morality which kept her from treading the path so many of her sister actresses were obliged to tread, and from procuring herself one or more rich protectors; it was rather that Sarah’s whole life now was bound up with the stage, and that in her love-affairs she consequently never strayed beyond its charmed circle.

I do not say that Sarah Bernhardt was any less or any more “immoral”—and we must try and remember, we readers of a different race, that the moral code of 1870 was not that of to-day—than were the half-dozen other leading actresses of the time; but I do assert that she never formed a liaison merely for the sake of the protection and wealth it could give her. When Sarah loved, when this brilliant woman gave herself, it was always for her art, and to someone who could assist her in the material realisation of her lofty and ambitious dreams. Such a thing as forming an alliance merely to rid herself of the burden of poverty probably never even entered her mind, which was always lifted above the sordid things of life. But when, as in the case of Pierre Berton, she was offered the love of a great and a noble character, or when, as in the case of Damala, she was swept off her feet by a romantic passion, she succumbed willingly enough.

A list of the men whom Sarah Bernhardt loved and by whom she was loved reads like a biographical index of the great Frenchmen of the nineteenth century. It includes actors, painters, sculptors, architects, cartoonists, poets, authors, and playwrights, but not one idle rich man or rich man’s son!

It is to be doubted whether Berton, Chilly or Duquesnel helped her to furnish the flat in the rue Auber, and it is therefore somewhat of a mystery how she managed to assemble the strange setting which framed her at this period of her life. Her taste was all Louis XV., and quaint bowlegged chairs and tables were scattered round her in great disorder.

Sarah’s was ever a careless nature and, being extremely imperious as well as chronically penniless, she could not keep a maid. She had her aged grandmother living with her for a period, and she had taken her baby from its hired nurse and installed him in a nursery at her own home. The child took up the grandmother’s time, and the household work seldom got done, except when RÉgine, Sarah’s wild and hoydenish little sister, could be persuaded upon to do her share.

“I shall never forget my first visit to Sarah’s flat,” said my husband to me once. “It was on a Saturday afternoon; we were going over a part together, and I had promised to finish the recital at Sarah’s home. I arrived about three o’clock, and was met at the door by a tumble-haired whirlwind in an old chemise and skirt, whom I with difficulty recognised as RÉgine, Sarah’s little sister. RÉgine looked as if she had not had a wash for a week, and perhaps she hadn’t. She had great smudges of grime on her face, and her hands were black.

“She dragged me into the salon, and here I got another shock, for the room was in the most frightful mess you can imagine. Empty wine bottles rolled about on the carpet; the remains of a meal stood partly on the mantelshelf and partly on the table, all mixed up with sheets of manuscript, which I saw were books of the plays which Sarah had appeared in. Photographs in gilt frames were here and there, most of them tumbled on their faces, and over all was a thick layer of dust. I had to dirty two of my handkerchiefs before one of the chairs could be trusted not to soil my trousers.

“From another room a baby kept up a wail, and I could hear Sarah talking to it, trying to calm it. Sarah’s child was then nearly five years old, but had the development of a normal child of three.

“When Sarah finally appeared, it was in a long smock covered with paint and grease. Her hair was done anyhow, and her wide-set eyes sparkled with fun as she viewed my distaste for her surroundings.”

During all the time Sarah and he remained intimate friends, Pierre told me, he could never bring himself to set foot again in her home. “It spoiled all my conceptions of her,” he said. “In the theatre she was such a fairylike, delightful creature. One could not help loving her. But at home——!”

One night, after a gay supper following the theatre, Sarah returned home to find her flat, in a building situated at the corner of the rue Auber and the Boulevard Haussmann, in flames. The fire had started in her own apartment, from a candle incautiously left burning by a maid-of-all-work who occasionally came to clean up. The blaze had been discovered shortly before midnight, and at one o’clock in the morning, when Sarah arrived, it was still confined to three rooms of the flat, but showed symptoms of spreading, in spite of the efforts of the firemen.

To her horror, Sarah discovered that nobody knew whether her baby had been saved or not!

There had been nobody but Maurice in the flat when she had left it for the theatre that night, with the exception of the charwoman, who had long since gone. The grandmother and RÉgine were both absent in the country. Unless one of the firemen had seen and rescued the child, therefore, there was every chance that it was inside the burning building.

The flat was of peculiar construction, because of the angle of the two streets. One end of it was disconnected from the other by a passage-way which had doors at both ends. The fire had started on the rue Auber side, and though it had spread upwards and downwards, it had not jumped across the court in the rear, or worked around the corner to the Boulevard Haussmann side, in which was the nursery.

Sarah took all this in at a glance. Her intense horror and dread of fire was not even thought of. Brushing aside those who tried to hold her back, she dashed into the Boulevard Haussmann entrance, ran up the stairs and into her flat. Groping her way through the smoke to the nursery, she found her son safe and sound in a deep sleep. She wrapped him in a blanket and came down with him into the street. There she collapsed, and was ill for two days.

When she was well enough to hear the news, they told her that the whole building had been burned down and that, but for her courageous intervention, her child would undoubtedly have been burned to death.

The best proof that Sarah even then possessed a number of jealous enemies was the statement openly made in the theatrical world that, weighed down with debt, she had caused the fire herself in order to collect the insurance.

This story, which has since been still more widely spread, is refuted by the following two facts: first, if Sarah had caused the fire, she would hardly have left her baby to run the risk of being burned to death; secondly, she had not yet paid the premium on the insurance, and it was consequently null and void. Instead of her collecting from the insurance company, it was this company, La FonciÈre, as the proprietor of a flat set on fire through carelessness, which collected from Sarah.

She was forced to pay the fabulous sum of forty thousand francs in damages, which she was enabled to do by the proceeds of a benefit performance at the OdÉon, at which Adelina Patti, then at the height of her fame, sang.

The receipts of this benefit were more than the necessary forty thousand francs, and with the remainder Sarah was able to take a flat at No. 4, rue de l’Arcade. It was furnished, however; and Sarah was still without the means to furnish a flat for herself until her late father’s man of affairs came and proposed to arrange a cash payment to her out of her father’s estate providing, she would insure her life in his favour for 250,000 francs. This was done, and Sarah rented a large flat at the corner of the rue de Rome, almost opposite the one which had been burned. This she was careful to insure immediately.

The other episode for which Sarah was much criticised was her famous practical joke at the OdÉon, after a quarrel with Duquesnel.

A call-boy rushed through the theatre screaming: “Bernhardt is dead! Bernhardt is dead!”

With one accord the entire cast rushed off the stage to Sarah’s dressing-room, where they were met by an extraordinary sight.

Sarah was reclining, dressed completely in white, on a flat couch placed in the middle of the floor. Her hands were crossed over her bosom, which appeared to be motionless, and a red stain was visible on her chin and neck. At the four corners of the couch were placed gigantic candles, like the cierges used in churches.

Who had placed her like that? Nobody knew. Her dressing-maid was in hysterics, and could not be questioned. Duquesnel came in and, taking in the tableau in a glance, burst into tears.

The performance was stopped and the curtain rung down. A doctor and an undertaker were hurriedly sent for, and the audience was informed by the grief-stricken Duquesnel that “Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt had suddenly passed away.”

Then, and then only, did Sarah sit up, kick over the candles with a sweep of her legs, and amaze and scandalise the mourners by going into screams of helpless laughter. Duquesnel was white with anger. Running to his office, he wrote and signed a note cancelling her contract, and stating that after that night her services would not be required.

Sarah threw the note in his face and flung herself out of the theatre. For hours she drove about in the Champs ElysÉes, careless of the falling snow. Next day Duquesnel sent her a note stating that, on reconsideration, she would be permitted to return, but that an apology would be expected.

A few hours later an emissary from Sarah arrived at the theatre. “She will not come back until you ask her to do so on your knees!” he told Duquesnel. The latter, realising that he stood in danger of losing his most popular star, went to Sarah’s home and apologised. Sarah reconsidered her remarks about making him get on his knees, and admitted that she had only meant to play a little joke, and had had no idea that it would go as far as it had. There, except for satirical comments on the “crazy Bernhardt” in the weekly papers, the matter ended.