Sarah grew to know at least two members of the revolutionary government extremely well. One was Jules Favre, who was given the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, and the other Rochefort, the notorious editor of La Lanterne, who was taken out of prison by the mob on the night the Empire was overthrown.

Two more opposite characters it would be hard to imagine. Favre was a man in middle life—calm, rigidly upright, a thinker and a statesman. Rochefort was little better than a literary apache, and was the idol of the worst quarters of Paris. His speeches were calculated to appeal to the baser instincts of the mob; those of Favre were the measured words of a lawyer. Rochefort, if he had ever seized the reins of power, might have been another Marat; while Jules Favre, if he could not save France from mutilation and humiliation at the hands of Germany, at least aided her in retaining her honour and self-respect.

When Jules Favre, with Paris ringed by enemy steel and guns capable of shelling the OpÉra point blank, and its population all but starved, said to Bismarck: “Not one foot of soil! Not one stone from our fortresses!” he was establishing for all time-to-come the immortal spirit of Republican France.

Think! Paris could have been laid in ashes on the morrow, the whole of France ravaged within a month, the last soldier put to the sword, all without any possibility of resistance—and there was found a Frenchman who could say defiantly to Bismarck: “Not one inch of soil! Not one stone from our fortresses!”

Who shall dim the glory of a nation like that?

If I seem to lay unwonted stress on the Franco-Prussian war—now a matter, even for the French, of cold, unsentimental history—it is because it occurred at perhaps the most impressionable moment of Sarah Bernhardt’s life, and has thus a direct bearing on our story.

We have just gone through a war so big that, although the Armistice was signed five years ago, it seems only yesterday. We have had living evidence ourselves of the influences of war upon the generation which fought it. We know how war can alter the characters of men, for we have seen it react on our own brothers and fathers and sisters. In France, in 1870, the women did not go to the war as they did in those terrible years from 1914 to 1918, but they bore their share—possibly the heaviest share—of suffering behind the scenes. In 1870 the army in the field was at least on the move, engaged in active operations; or, if it had been compelled to capitulate, it was, at least, not hungry. But at that time the women of Paris were very nearly starving. It is hard to keep up courage, let alone enthusiasm, on an empty stomach; but this the women of Paris did!

As the Germans drew closer and closer to Paris and the outer defences began to fall, the flood of wounded that poured into the hastily-contrived hospitals increased, until it became a matter of serious doubt whether there were sufficient beds to hold them. Almost everything was lacking—bedding, medicines, bandages, doctors, nurses and food.

Starting with five wounded soldiers, Sarah’s hospital in the OdÉon was soon taking care of more than a hundred. I remember visiting it with my mother during the siege, and the frightfully fetid odour that assailed one on entering the door still lingers in my nostrils.

The wounded lay both in the theatre proper and on the stage. The beds were placed in great semi-circles, leaving wide aisles between, along which the doctors and nurses walked.

The nurses were nearly all actresses and friends of Sarah Bernhardt whom she herself had trained. Their efficiency, naturally, left much to be desired, but to the wounded they seemed like ministering angels.

Among the patients were many German prisoners, and during the siege these always had the best and choicest food obtainable, so that when cured they could be released and sent back to their army, to refute the impression of a starving Paris!

Sarah told a story of one man, a corporal, who taunted her on his arrival with the words: “Oh ho! I see the stories were true! You have had nothing to eat for so long that you are a skeleton!”

This uncomplimentary allusion to Sarah’s slimness angered her excessively, but she went on bandaging the man’s leg, which was broken. The next day the corporal was astonished at being served with chicken soup for his dinner. On the following one he was given boiled eggs and some young lamb.

“Chicken, eggs and lamb in a starving city!” he exclaimed. “Why, you have everything you want! All these stories of a starving Paris, then, are untrue?”

He did not know that Sarah’s own dinner for days had been black bread and beans, and that she had not eaten meat for more than a month! Whatever delicacies were brought to the hospital were for her wounded.

Her face grew thinner, but took on an added beauty. She did not spare her frail body, but worked from early morning until late at night. More than once, when an exceptionally late convoy of wounded arrived, she worked all night as well.

Her character became stronger and nobler; forged in the fires of suffering, the metal rang true. “La Bernhardt” became a password of homage among the soldiers. From a careless gamine, flattered by the adulation of the multitude, she became a serious woman, striving only for one thing: the alleviation of suffering among the soldiers who were giving their all for their country.

It might be said that the war came at an opportune moment in Sarah Bernhardt’s career. It demonstrated to her that, despite the plaudits of Paris and the flattery of the multitude, she was only an ineffectual morsel of the universe. It served to tame her conceit, to teach her how insignificant individual success and glory are compared to the welfare or suffering of a nation.

Her character became more subdued, her fits of temper less violent and more rare. Her beauty had not suffered, however; rather had it been enhanced. Her eyes, always enigmatic, had themselves gained something of the sentiment which animated her being. Dressed in the white of a military nurse, with the red-and-green cross on either arm and on her hooded cap, she was ethereally lovely.

She used to go round begging overcoats from her rich acquaintances. The OdÉon was large, coal scarce and heating difficult. It became a proverb among the men she knew: “Don’t go down to the OdÉon with your overcoat on, or you will lose it: ‘la Bernhardt’ will take it for her wounded!”

Nevertheless, they were generous to her. The Ministry of War, established in the Palace of the Tuileries, allowed her the same rations as those allowed to the regular hospitals—and, in fact, Sarah’s personal appeals probably obtained for her something extra.

At any rate, even in the darkest days of the siege, Sarah Bernhardt’s wounded never lacked for anything essential. She set every woman and child of her acquaintance to work making bandages and folding lint. I myself worked eight hours a day so doing. How I loved Sarah Bernhardt in those days! She seemed to me to be glory personified.

When the siege began there were, according to official statistics, 220,000 sheep, 40,000 oxen and 12,000 pigs within the city limits. This, said the authorities, was ample to provide for the wants of Paris for five or six months. And so it would have been—if they had not forgotten that a live lamb or ox or pig needs to be fed as well as the human beings who are subsequently to eat them! They had brought this vast army of animals to Paris, but they had forgotten to bring in sufficient quantities of forage to feed them.

All the public buildings were used for storing either food or munitions. The OpÉra, which had not then been officially opened, was organised as a gigantic warehouse by Charles Garnier, its architect, and it was discovered that a river of fresh water flowed underneath its cellars.

Sarah Bernhardt had had her hospital in full working order for six weeks before she discovered that all the cellars underneath the OdÉon were filled with boxes of cartridges and cases of shells! Since the Germans could have shelled the OdÉon point blank from the heights of Bellevue or Montretout, there was some excuse for the urgent protest she made in person to Rochefort, that these munitions should be removed and her wounded relieved from the necessity of lying on a powder mine. Rochefort saw that the necessary orders were given.

As winter dragged on, the siege became a wearisome thing, but the courage of the Parisians could not be daunted. Cut off from all communication with the outside world, and even from their fugitive armies in the South; starving and nearly at an end of their resources, there was nevertheless no real thought of surrender. The Germans said Paris could not hold out a month. It had already held out two.

The hardest thing was to keep up the spirits of the people, and in this Sarah Bernhardt again took a leading part. The police had closed the theatres, and many of these, like the OdÉon and the OpÉra, were being used for purposes of national defence. But it was felt that some amusements should be provided, so Pasdeloup, the famous conductor, was asked to organise a committee of singers, musicians and stage-folk to see if some way could not be found of getting over the difficulty. Eventually, on October 23, Pasdeloup gave his first concert, and shortly afterwards LescouvÉ re-opened the ComÉdie FranÇaise.

Sarah Bernhardt organised a scratch theatrical company from among those of the actors and actresses of the OdÉon who were available, rehearsed several stock plays and gave them in the open air, for the benefit of the troops of the National Guard, who were encamped on the fortifications and in the parks.

In November Pierre Berton re-appeared—an older, bearded, strange-looking Berton. He had been in that part of the army which was cut off from Paris, and had only reached the capital by slipping past the German sentries at the peril of his life.

“But why did you not stay in the country, where you were safe, and where your family is?” he was asked. It was true—his mistress and his children had long ago escaped to Tours.

“What?—stay out of Paris, and she here?” he demanded, pointing to Sarah Bernhardt.

Their intimacy continued, but without the great passion of other days. Sarah was tender to him, but made him see that her days and nights belonged now to the wounded. Nevertheless, Berton complained that others had taken his place in her heart.

There were four men, in particular, who excited his jealousy. These were the Count of KÉratry, under-secretary for food supplies; Paul de Remusat, one of the prevailing moderate elements in the new Government and a great friend of Thiers; Rochefort, who certainly had for Sarah a strange and somewhat uncanny attraction, in view of his violence and his dissolute character (Sarah says of him: “It was Rochefort who caused the downfall of the Empire”); and finally Captain O’Connor, a cavalryman, who was a much more serious competitor for Sarah’s affections than the other three. O’Connor will figure in these memoirs later on.

There is considerable doubt as to whether Count de KÉratry was ever a lover of Sarah Bernhardt’s. He had known her since she was a child at Grandchamps, when he used to visit the Convent to spend an hour with a niece, who was a pupil there. Later, he had been introduced to her family, and by the time he received his commission as a lieutenant of cavalry and was sent to command a unit in the campaign of Mexico, had come to be a rather frequent visitor in the house in the rue MichodiÈre. From then on Sarah Bernhardt did not see him until he returned, just before the Franco-Prussian war, and was given an appointment on the Staff. After the Revolution he was made a prÉfect, with special charge over the victualling of the city.

It was he who saw that Sarah’s hospital was so well supplied with food—well supplied, that is, in comparison with other hospitals of a similarly independent character. During the siege Sarah saw him frequently, and he went often to the OdÉon.

He was greatly enamoured of the young actress, but they were both too busy to give much time to each other, and certainly their humane duties precluded any prolonged love-making. But Berton saw in the Count de KÉratry’s frequent visits to Sarah an intrigue that threatened to oust him from his privileged place at her side, and he made many heated remonstrances to that effect.

Paul de Remusat, an author, playwright and educationalist, and withal a most supremely modest and unassuming man, was one of the real forces behind the revolution, but he was not one of the popular figures in it. He seldom spoke in public.

Sarah had been introduced to him, some months prior to the war, by the younger Dumas. She found inordinate pleasure in reading his writings, which were of an inspiring beauty. She would go to his modest apartment in the rue de Seine and sit on the floor at his feet, one arm over his knees, as he read to her his latest works.

It was to Paul de Remusat that Thiers, Favre, Arago, CrÉmieux, Gambetta, Jules Simon, Ferry, Picard, PagÈs and the rest of the revolutionary committee came in the afternoon with their plan of action (that night the Empire fell). It was de Remusat who revised this plan, and advised them of the pitfalls that lay ahead.

He could have had anything in the gift of the new Government. If the times had not decreed that the President must be a military man—the honour eventually went to the Governor of Paris, General Trochu—there is no doubt in my mind that Paul de Remusat would have been offered the highest post possible in the new order of things. The fact that he had a “de” as prefix to his name was another drawback, for it only needed a “de” to convince some people of one’s royalist leanings.

Eventually, it was decided to make him Minister of Fine Arts, and a committee was sent to him with this idea in view. That evening the president of this committee, M. ThÉophile Besson, sent for Sarah and said to her, despairingly: “It is no use, we cannot move him. You are the only person on earth, mademoiselle, who can make him change his mind!” Sarah consented to do her best, and saw de Remusat the next day. He asked to be allowed twenty-four hours to think the matter over, and he then wrote to Sarah to this effect.

“ChÈre, chÈre amie: Allow me to remain, my charming little friend, in the shadow, where I can see so much clearer than I would if smothered in honours!”

In another letter a few days afterwards he said:

“You know well that you have instilled into me an ideal of beauty too partial to be of service to the world, which makes me prefer to avoid worldly strife and ambitions.”

Throughout her career Sarah Bernhardt seemed to have possessed this God-given faculty of elevating the ideals and ennobling the ambitions of men. The influence she exerted on her century in matters of art was incalculable. To painters she would say: “If you love me, then paint a masterpiece and dedicate it to me!” To poets she would say: “If it is true that you love me, you will write a poem about me that will live when we both are dead!” And true it is that numbers of famous verses to anonymous beauty had their inception in the ideal which Sarah Bernhardt had succeeded in creating.

Alexandre Dumas fils once told me: “She drives me mad when I am with her. She is all temperament and no heart; but when she is gone, how I work! How I can work!”

Georges Clairin threw down his tools in his studio one day, interrupting work on a great mural painting he was doing for Sarah Bernhardt’s house, and went in search of Sarah. When he had found her, he remained half an hour in silent contemplation of her face. Finally, he jammed his round black velvet artist’s cap on his head, turned on his heel without a word and, returning to his studio, worked savagely on his painting until it was finished.

“Before,” he told me, “it used to be absinthe; now it is Sarah!”

Where other actresses prided themselves on their influence in politics—there was a time when affairs of state were habitually settled in the salons of the reigning beauties—Sarah, consciously or unconsciously, exerted her influence on men of letters and art.

She would not look at a man unless he was doing something useful with his life. She despised idlers, and was ever at work herself. Not that she was of severe or strictly moral character. Far from it. But she used her beauty and her undisputed hold on men in the finest way possible: namely by inspiring and creating idealism in the minds of the clever men who loved her. That may have been the secret of her hold on men.

It became an axiom in the theatrical world: “If you want an introduction to So-and-so (naming a prominent author, playwright, or artist), go and ask Sarah Bernhardt.”

Her influence on Pierre Berton was somewhat of a different sort, but this was his and not her fault. Berton had an excessively jealous temperament, as I found out for myself later on.

Victor Hugo had returned in triumph to Paris from his secret place of exile, and Pierre Berton was asked to read his poem “Les Chatiments,” the daring and somewhat terrible masterpiece that is credited with having been chiefly responsible for the spread of anti-imperialist feeling in France. It was a forbidden work under the Empire and had previously only been read in secret in the clubs.

Berton read the poem in the ThÉÂtre Lyrique, before a great and enthusiastic crowd. Sarah refused to attend. She still felt some bitterness against Victor Hugo, for, though she now called herself a Republican—it was dangerous to term oneself anything else—she had preserved cherished memories of the Emperor, the Empress, and the Court in which her acting had once produced a sensation. She had never forgotten that simple act of generous courtesy, when the Emperor Napoleon had descended from his throne to kiss her on the cheek, in recognition both of her beauty and her art. He might be a prisoner in Germany and they might call him an imbecile, but she remembered him as a very gentle friend. And the Empress—who had escaped from Paris in the carriage of an American dentist—it was she who had commanded the performance at the Tuileries, and it was she who had personally sent a note of thanks to Sarah at the theatre on the following day.

Sarah’s memories of Royalty were inspiring. And she had hardly become accustomed to Republicanism when the existing Government was swept away with the Capitulation of Paris, and the horrors of the Commune introduced.

Sarah saw Paris set on fire by the maniacs who said they were “saving the nation”; saw many of her friends in political circles shot dead without trial; feared, like many others, that the Terror was come again. And, to add to her trouble, a man whom she had been at some pains to make an enemy was appointed chief of police!

This man was Raoul Rigault, a youngster of thirty. He had been one of that student band who established Sarah’s fame, and had presumed on this fact to send her loving verses, and on one occasion a play in bad verse, which she promptly returned through Berton as being “unfit for her to handle, let alone read.” Rigault was furious and swore vengeance.

When the Commune came, Rigault was appointed PrÉfect of Police, and he visited Sarah at her flat, situated, after another move on her part, in the Boulevard Malesherbes. “It depends upon you, mademoiselle,” he said, “whether there is war or peace between us.”

Sarah, angered beyond measure at this insult, sprang up and struck him on the face with the palm of her hand. Then she ordered him to be shown the door.

When Berton came later in the day, he wanted to seek out Rigault at once and kill him. “The rat!” he kept declaring, “the rat!”

He did, in fact, visit the PrÉfecture with the idea of meeting Rigault and “calling him out,” but could not find him. Before the Communist could wreak his threatened vengeance on Sarah, the Commune was over and he was executed.

Immediately after the signature of peace, Sarah made a long and exceedingly hazardous voyage to Hamburg, via Holland, where she met her family and saw her baby boy again. She furiously abused her mother and her aunt for daring to take her son to Germany during that country’s war on France, and after their return to Paris she refused for some time to have anything to do with her Aunt Rosine, whom she regarded as responsible for the outrage. She brought her son back with her.

Among her acquaintances before the war had been a man named James O’Connor, a Frenchman of Irish descent. She had had little to do with him at this epoch, and had known him only as a frequenter of several literary salons which she had been in the habit of attending.

Just before the siege of Paris, Captain O’Connor—he had been given a commission in the cavalry—was brought to her hospital at the OdÉon, suffering from a bullet wound in the hip. Though his recovery was rapid his convalescence was long. Sarah tended him with her own hands, and their friendship ripened into a warm intimacy. With Berton more and more involved in politics, and passing nearly all his evenings at meetings in the home of Victor Hugo, Sarah saw a lot of the dashing Captain O’Connor, and it was he who, when the Communist rebellion broke out, arranged her escape from Paris with her son, and installed her in a cottage between St. Germain and Versailles.

Almost every day they took long gallops together and once, when riding through the Park of Versailles, they were shot at by a crazy communist who had hidden himself behind a tree. The bullet missed its mark and, turning in the saddle, Captain O’Connor mortally wounded the man. Then he made as if to ride coolly on.

“But you are not going to leave him like that?” asked Sarah, sick at heart, pointing to the man who lay dying on the grass.

“Why not,” asked O’Connor, coldly. “He would have worried himself precious little about you and me if he had succeeded in killing us. Every day friends in my regiment are killed in this way by some of these madmen in ambush.”

Sarah slipped off her horse and supported the man’s head in her arms, where a few seconds later he expired. Then, remounting with a stony face, she gave her hand to O’Connor.

“What’s the matter?” he asked in cynical amazement.

“I will not ride any further with an assassin!” she said, and then galloped away.

This unjust accusation deeply mortified O’Connor, especially as Sarah refused to see him the next day when he rode over to offer renewed explanations and to exact an apology.