It was only after the publication of his critique—which in the circumstances Sarah recognised as just—that he discovered the real reason for her poor performance. He then had the grace not only to apologise personally, but to publish an account of what had happened in a later issue of Le Temps.
His apology, however, could not alter the fact that the public thought her explanation only an artiste’s excuse, and the honours of the play went definitely to Sophie Croizette, who was really one of the most accomplished artistes who have ever adorned the French stage.
For the next ten years there was a terrific rivalry between these two—not only in Paris, but abroad.
If Sarah created a rôle one week, Sophie created one the next, and critics were divided in their opinion as to which was the greater actress. If Sarah went on tour, so did Sophie; and the duel between these two close friends kept Paris perpetually entertained.
It was generally agreed, finally, that Sarah was the greater actress, but that she was also the more eccentric, the more apt to lose her head; nor, it was said, did she have the innate technique that distinguished Croizette’s performances.
Croizette had few enemies—and perhaps that is why she has been forgotten, or nearly so, by the public. Sarah, on the contrary, used to say that she counted a day lost wherein she had not made “either a true enemy or a supposedly true friend.”
CHAPTER XVII
Episode now succeeded episode in the life of the young actress—for she was still not more than twenty-eight years old.
She quarrelled with Francisque Sarcey and fell in love with an old friend of the Odéon—Mounet-Sully, the handsomest actor on the French stage, who, like Sarah, had been taken from the Odéon by the management of the Théâtre Français.