From inquiries she made here and there among her friends, she found that he had served in the war, and that he had an enviable record for bravery. It is thus with many timid, unassuming men.
De Lagrenée was a man of noble artistic temperament, very much the idealist and the passionate lover—but so far he had done his passionate loving at a distance.
“Who is the remarkable-looking man with the decoration in that box?” she asked Mounet-Sully, who was playing with her.
“That is Edouard de Lagrenée,” answered Mounet-Sully. “He is very distinguished in the diplomatic service.”
During the first entr’acte, through a hole in the curtain, she pointed out de Lagrenée to a call-boy.
“You see that man?” she said. “Send him to me!”
But her messenger returned without him.
“Monsieur thanks Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt for her courtesy, but begs to state that he is a worshipper on a lower plane, and would not dare to approach the altar of his goddess!” was the quaint reply of the diplomat.
Sarah did not know whether to be offended or pleased. In any case she was immensely interested, and determined at once to bring about an occasion on which de Lagrenée would be obliged to meet her.
Accordingly she made inquiries and found that he was in the habit of frequenting the Salon held by Madame Lobligeois in her house in the Avenue des Champs Elysées—a villa set back in what were then woods—which had become a rendezvous of the intellectual set. Through her old friend Duquesnel, still director of the Odéon, she arranged to be invited to one of these exclusive affairs, and that her intention to be present should be kept a secret.