“‘Ah,’ said Victor Hugo, on perceiving me, ‘here is Her Majesty the Queen!’ He seized my hand, kissed it twice and then, drawing me to him, kissed me on both cheeks. It was a characteristic salutation.
“‘I see that she is no longer the Queen, but has become again the artiste of Victor Hugo!’” exclaimed Duquesnel.
“Hugo shook his head violently. ‘No,’ he cried, ‘she is more than an artiste, more than a Queen—she is a woman!’
“We dined at a long table—more than sixty persons, including practically the whole Ruy Blas company. My chair had been placed at one end, but I had no sooner sat down than Hugo began looking round and running his hand through his hair in the nervous fashion I remember so well. When he saw me, he cried out: ‘Ah, no! My dinner will be spoiled!’ Then he added, speaking to Essler who was seated immediately opposite him: ‘Jane, you are older than Sarah; take the seat of honour at the end, and tell her Majesty to come here!’
“Jane did as he requested, but with excusably bad grace. Before I had come to the Odéon, she had been its bright, particular star.
“The order was given to open all the doors and windows, and everyone was provided with fans, but the heat was stifling. Nobody could eat anything. Duquesnel sat next to me on one side, and Théophile Gautier, the poet, on the other. Immediately opposite to me was Victor Hugo. On his right was Chilly, and on his left Madame Lambquin, who played the part of the Camerera Major, and who was the doyenne of the Odéon.
“I remember that I did not touch the first course at all—it was a species of hors-d’œuvres made from beetroot, a vegetable which I then detested. Paul de St. Victor, who sat next to Madame Lambquin, apparently adored the vegetable and ate so much that the juice ran down his cheeks. For a poet, he was the fattest and most repulsive being I have ever known. I hated him, and he knew it.
“I managed to eat a little of the fish, which came next, but the horrible manners of St. Victor had completely spoiled my appetite. As I very seldom ate meat—I attribute my long life partly to the fact that I have rarely departed from vegetarianism—I got very little to eat that night.
“When the vegetable course was over, Duquesnel rose to his feet and, in a few words, proposed our host, Victor Hugo’s, health. Hugo then replied in a long address, full of sentiment and expression, in which he was good enough to refer to me as the ‘animatrice’ of the play.
“‘I,’ he declared, ‘have only written the piece, but she has lived it!’ Then, turning to me and bowing, he said: ‘Mademoiselle, you have a voice of gold!’