Sarah signed the lease with the civic authorities of Paris to run the ThÉÂtre de l’OpÉra Comique, on the Place du ChÂtelet, in November, 1898. She immediately changed the name to ThÉÂtre Sarah Bernhardt, and on January 18, 1899, she opened it with Adrienne Lecouvreur.

This was a curtain-raiser, so to speak, and it soon gave place to L’Aiglon, which has been consistently included in that theatre’s rÉpertoire ever since.

By a singular irony of coincidence L’Aiglon was being played at the ThÉÂtre Sarah Bernhardt on that sad night, the twenty-sixth of March, 1923, when the world of art and drama was thrown into mourning by her death.

It was at the ThÉÂtre de l’OpÉra Comique, it will be remembered, where Sarah saw her first play as a little girl. And it was there that she played her last.

Although it was to be nearly a quarter of a century before the final curtain fell, Sarah found her energy, though not her fortitude, diminishing. Further and further her sentimental life was being pushed into the background, as the cares of business and of management weighed on her.

She moved to a little red-brown house on the Boulevard Pereire, and there at last, after all her wanderings amongst the different quarters of Paris, she found a permanent home. Into it she brought the accumulated treasures of a lifetime spent in travel, including gifts that had come to her from every corner of the globe.

She installed herself in this house alone with a secretary, for her son was married now and living in a street near-by, in a home of his own.

Here also she brought the waiter Claude, who loved to call himself “l’Écuyer de Sarah Bernhardt,” or “Sarah Bernhardt’s butler,” and FÉlicie, her maid.

Sarah was very particular over her table. She insisted on the best. Although she herself ate frugally, her guests were always given the choicest that could be procured.

Sarah was a vegetarian—she remained so, in fact, all her life although on one or two occasions perhaps she may have pecked at a bird, a slice of venison, or a similar dainty.

In the morning, at eight o’clock, she would partake of an orange, a light roll, and drink a cup of weak tea. The orange-for-breakfast habit she acquired in America, where fruit customarily precedes the first meal of the day.

Then she would work until noon, when she would be served with her only real meal—an omelette, perhaps, and a piece of fish, and more fruit. Until she was thirty-four she never tasted cheese—it offended, she said, her Æsthetic sense!—but when she grew old, a light gruyÈre or a Pont-l’EvÊque was a favourite dish of hers.

At five in the afternoon she had an invariable glass of champagne, and at seven an oeuf soufflÉ or something similarly light. For years her diet was prescribed by doctors, and never a week went by after 1890 that Sarah Bernhardt was not examined by a physician. Despite the accident to her leg and the subsequent phlebitis, which grew more serious with every recurrent attack, Sarah continued to act in the plays she produced at the ThÉÂtre Sarah Bernhardt. One after another she produced L’Aiglon, Hamlet, La SorciÈre, Le ProcÈs de Jeanne d’Arc, La Belle au Bois Dormant, La Beffa, La Courtisane de Corinthe, LucrÈce Borgia, Les Bouffons, and Jeanne DorÉe.

Thrice, after she opened her theatre, she undertook long, fatiguing tours of America and Europe, and once she went to Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. “Bernhardt’s Circus” was what her travelling company was facetiously nicknamed by the Paris press—the fun and criticism of which, however, had grown considerate and kindly.

“Sarah Bernhardt is a national institution; to criticise her is like criticising the Tomb of Napoleon,” said Le Journal des DÉbats one evening.

The Prince of Wales, who was shortly to become King Edward VII., was a warm friend of Sarah Bernhardt, and on one well-remembered occasion paid an informal visit, together with the Princess of Wales, to her home in Paris.

“What did you talk about?” I asked, the next day.

“Dogs and dresses,” said Sarah promptly.

“The Prince,” she continued, “is tremendously interested in dogs, and there we have a common ground.”

Once the Prince called on Sarah in her dressing-room—this was when she was at the Renaissance.

Word was sent in advance, of course, that he was coming—and she was requested to be ready to receive him at ten o’clock. At that hour she was customarily on the stage, and her entourage was excited at the possibility of her not being there to receive the Royal visitor.

The stage-manager suggested advancing the time of the whole piece, so that the third act would be finished by ten, but this did not suit Sarah, who knew that such an arrangement would make many people who had purchased seats miss a part of the first act.

She settled it in her own characteristic fashion.

“Let him wait,” she said. “After all, he isn’t King yet!”

At ten o’clock—punctuality is the politeness of kings—the Prince arrived. When Sarah returned, she found him in the wings, watching the life behind the scenes with intense interest. It being draughty there, he had not removed his hat.

He advanced his hand, but Sarah kept hers at her side. She was in one of her haughty moods that evening.

“A King may wear his crown, but a Prince must remove his hat in the presence of a lady,” she said loftily.

The Prince snatched his silk hat from his head, blushed deeply, and murmured a confused apology. It was probably the one occasion in his life when a woman treated him with such scant consideration for his Royal dignity!

After the famous dinner “en famille” given to the Prince and Princess of Wales by Sarah—it was supposed to be strictly secret, but Sarah saw that it leaked into the papers!—she received a note from one of the ladies-in-waiting to the Princess, who, with her Royal husband, was living at the Hotel Bristol in the Place VendÔme.

“Her Royal Highness was much interested in the gown which Madame Bernhardt was describing to her last night, and wonders whether Madame Bernhardt could spare her a few minutes this morning to consult with her regarding it.”

Truly a strange message to be sent by a Princess to an actress!

Sarah visited the hotel and had another long chat with the Princess, whose beauty and grace were the talk of Paris. They talked of a good deal besides dresses. The Princess loved to speak of her beloved Denmark, which Sarah knew well, and they recalled the first occasion on which Sarah went there, just after she left the ComÉdie FranÇaise, when the Princess was also visiting her native country.

Sarah gave the Prince a Swiss shepherd-dog, and he, after becoming King Edward VII., sent her an Airedale puppy. This puppy came to an unfortunate end shortly afterwards. It died in agony as the result of being bitten by Sarah’s pet panther.

After he came to the throne, King Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra invariably “commanded” a performance whenever Sarah was in London. It might be at Windsor, or at Sandringham, or in London, but afterwards the kindly King and the lovely Queen of England would carry Sarah off for a confidential chat in the homelike atmosphere of their private apartments.

Sarah had hundreds of reminiscences to relate regarding her two Royal friends. How she loved Queen Alexandra!

In 1904 Sarah had another and severe attack of phlebitis while on tour in America, and lay ill for a long time in San Francisco. It was thought then that she would eventually lose her limb. The poison was gradually creeping upwards, and she could not put her foot to the ground without intense pain. She remained a fortnight in bed, with her leg held up by a pulley.

Sarah’s fortitude throughout her long trial was amazing. As soon as her foot became sufficiently well to stand upon, she insisted on returning to the theatre.

Finally, when she was playing in Bordeaux in the early spring of 1915 she had another and more critical attack, and was taken to Dr. Moure’s private clinic.

Dr. Pozzi, the famous surgeon, was sent for from Paris, but after examination he shook his head.

“Amputation cannot save her,” he said, and he refused to undertake the operation.

Another doctor was sent for, Dr. Denucce, also a great surgeon. Dr. Denucce put the situation squarely before the actress.

“There is one hope for you—amputation—but it is a chance in a thousand, for the infection has reached the spine,” he told her.

Sarah heard her sentence calmly.

“Cut it off!” she said.

When they laid her on the operating table, they tried to cheer her with words of encouragement, but Sarah’s brave smile shone wanly.

“I have already faced death seven times,” she said. “If this is when my light is to go out, I shall not be afraid!”

She was in a terrible condition, not only physically but financially. The operation was a success, but she had not a cent with which to pay the clinic or the doctors. The Rothschilds and their friends finally came to the rescue.

“All my life, it seems, I have been making money for others to spend!” she said, but with no complaint in her voice.

She faced her future then, penniless after the millions she had earned, and with one leg, as courageously as she had returned to face a jeering Paris after her first visit to London. By the irony of fate her sick-room at Bordeaux was filled with flowers worth literally thousands of pounds, that had been sent from all quarters of France by her worshippers.

“If I only had the money these flowers cost!” she remarked resignedly.

The war was on, and the ambulance in which she was being taken to the station on her way back to Paris overtook regiment after regiment of soldiers on their way to the Front.

“La glorieuse blessÉe,” the papers called her, and the soldiers thronged about the ambulance and her car on the train, taking the flowers that decorated their bayonets and throwing them at the indomitable genius who sat inside it with tears in her eyes.

Within six months Sarah herself was at the Front, playing from an armchair for the poilus who were battling to check the invader.

She was then seventy-one years old.