Am I alone to blame for my disillusionment? I had pictured something incomprehensible because Sarah Bernhardt is an inspired artist.
But she is also a woman, and it took me twenty years to find it out. She is a woman, a fact I shall now never be able to forget, but she remains my divinity just the same.
IX
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
ONE evening at the Folies-Bergère two cards were brought to me. On one of them was engraved the name of the Minister of Finance of the island of Haiti; on the other, that of M. Eugène Poulle, also of Haiti.
What business could these two gentlemen have with me? The minister probably wanted me to come and dance at his house.
The gentlemen entered, and I recognised in one of them my Jamaica exile.
But that calls for an explanation.
In 1890 I was engaged by an actor named William Morris for a tour of the West Indies. I was to be star of the company, of which he was the leading man.
One cold winter morning we sailed out of New York harbour, and hardly were we at sea before we fell victims to a fearful storm. For two days and two nights the captain remained on the bridge, and it looked as if we were destined to sink. My mother and I had never undertaken an ocean voyage before. We were terribly sick and, shut up in our cabin, we supposed that at sea things always went this way. All that we regretted was that we had ever made the trip. Certainly no one would ever induce us to do so again.
When we arrived in southern waters and the waves were still, we appreciated what an extraordinary gale it was that had so shaken us up. Some days later we landed at Kingston, Jamaica.