[12] She says she had chosen this device at the age of nine, “after a formidable jump over a ditch which no one could jump, and which my young cousin had dared me to attempt. I had hurt my face, broken my wrist and was in pain all over. While I was being carried home I exclaimed furiously: ‘Yes, I would do it again, quand-même, if any one dared me again. And I will always do what I want to all my life.’ In the evening of that day, my aunt, who was grieved to see me in such pain, asked me what would give me any pleasure. My poor little body was all bandaged, but I jumped with joy at this, and quite consoled I whispered in a coaxing way: ‘I should like to have some writing paper with a motto of my own.’ My mother asked me rather slyly what my motto was. I did not answer for a minute, and then, as they were all waiting quietly, I uttered such a furious ‘Quand-même!’ that my Aunt Faure started back muttering: ‘What a terrible child!’”
[13] The great critic Sarcey’s comments in L’Opinion Nationale were read to her by her mother: “Mlle. Bernhardt, who made her début yesterday in the rôle of Iphigénie, is a tall, pretty girl with a slender figure and a very pleasing expression. The upper part of her face is remarkably beautiful. She holds herself well, and her enunciation is perfectly clear. This is all that can be said for her at present.” “The man is an idiot,” said her mother, “you were charming.”—Memoirs.
[14] Characteristically, she brought her engagement at the Gymnase to a sudden close by quietly going to Spain the day after the first performance of a play in which she disliked her part.
[15] Thin she was, and thin she remained. She once said, in after years: “As for me, if I should cease to be thin, what would become of some of the Paris journalists? Scarcely a day but they have some mot about me personally. Really I am almost the raison d’être of some of these small wits!”
[16] She played at the Odéon: Albine in Britannicus; Sylvia in Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard; Zacharie in Athalie; the Baroness in Le Marquis de Villemer; Mariette in François le Champi; Hortense in Le Testament de César Girodôt; Anna Damby in Kean (Dumas’ Sullivan); in La Loterie du Mariage; Zanetto in Le Passant by Coppée; in L’Autre by George Sand; Armande in Les Femmes Savantes; Cordelia in King Lear; in Le Bâtard; L’Affranchi; Jean-Marie, by Andre Theuriet; Les Arrêts by de Boissières, Le Legs; Le Drame de la Rue de la Paix; Fais ce que dois, by Coppée; La Baronne by Edmond and Foussier; Mlle. Aïsse; and the Queen of Spain in Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo.
[17] On the first night of Dumas’ play, the distinguished author was the victim of a remarkable demonstration by the audience. He sat in a box with “Oceana.” The novelist’s alliance with this woman was evidently unpopular, for a great shout was sent up and many in the audience were heard to call for the woman’s removal. In the midst of the uproar the play, already long delayed, was begun. The woman finally left the house. The Figaro next day said: “Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt appeared wearing an eccentric costume, which increased the tumult, but her rich voice—that astonishing voice of hers—appealed to the public, and she charmed them like a little Orpheus.”
[18] Now about five. Although she was a mother Sarah had not yet married.
[19] Mme. Bernhardt tells a rather pretty story of the great novelist: “One day when the rehearsal was over an hour earlier than usual, I was waiting, my forehead pressed against the window pane, for the arrival of Mme. Guérard, who was coming to fetch me. I was gazing idly at the footpath opposite, which is bounded by the Luxembourg railings. Victor Hugo had just crossed the road and was about to walk in. An old woman attracted his attention. She had just put a heavy bundle of linen down on the ground and was wiping her forehead, on which were great beads of perspiration. In spite of the cold, her toothless mouth was half open, as she was panting and her eyes had an expression of distressing anxiety, as she looked at the wide road she had to cross, with carriages and omnibuses passing each other. Victor Hugo approached her, and after a short conversation, he drew a piece of money from his pocket, handed it to her, then taking off his hat he confided it to her and, with a quick movement and a laughing face, lifted the bundle to his shoulder and crossed the road, followed by the bewildered woman. The next day I told the poet that I had witnessed his delicate, good deed. ‘Oh,’ said Paul Maurice, ‘every day that dawns is a day of kindness for him!’”
[20] It was small enough, to be sure. Her demand was for only 15,000 francs ($3,000) a year.
[21] It was on the occasion of the first night of this play that she says she reverted to a trick of her childhood. Once when she had been fed something disagreeable, Sarah deliberately drank off a bottle of ink in the hope that she would die and vex her mother. Now when Perrin refused her a month’s needed holiday and forced her to play Zaïre in midsummer: “I was determined to faint, determined to vomit blood, determined to die, in order to enrage Perrin. Although the rôle was easy, it required two or three shrieks which might have provoked the vomiting of blood that frequently troubled me at that time. I uttered my shrieks with real rage and suffering, hoping to break something. But my surprise was great when the curtain fell at the end of the piece, and I got up quickly to answer to the call and salute the public without languor, without fainting, ready to recommence the piece. I had commenced the performance in such a state of weakness that it was easy to predict that I should not finish the first act without fainting. And I marked this performance with a little white stone—for that day I learned that my vital force was at the service of my intellect.” This is a significant passage. It helps to explain the wonder of Bernhardt’s unexampled vitality in the face of hard work and a frail physique.