The next day she chose a little statue she had herself modelled, and sent it to him, with the inscription: “To my perfect man, from Sara,” spelling her name without the “h,” as she sometimes did.
Clairin presented her with fifteen different paintings, all of which she kept until the end of her life. Five were of herself.
These paintings were: “A Portrait of Alexandre Dumas fils,” signed by both Clairin and Dumas; “Sarah Bernhardt, Lecturer”—this was done as recently as 1914; “Sarah Bernhardt as Théodora”; “Portrait of Charles Gounod”; “View of Beg-Meil”; “The Toilet of Cupid”; “The Fool and the Skull”; “The Attack on the Fort by the Blues”; “Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra”; “Sarah Bernhardt between Comedy and Tragedy”; “Repose on a Rock”; “The Stairway in the Cliff”; “The Virgin of Avila”; “Sarah Bernhardt as Théroigne de Méricourt”; “Characters of Comedy.” The last was a sketch in black-and-white.
These pictures, all of which were signed and dedicated to Sarah by Clairin, fetched unexpectedly low prices at the Paris sale of her effects two months after her death. One was sold for as low as 160 francs—then about two guineas—while the highest price, fifteen hundred francs, was paid for the portrait of Sarah as Théodora, which was conceded to be one of Clairin’s greatest achievements.
Their romance lasted for several months. Then came the inevitable rupture, the cause of which nobody knew, and Sarah left for a tour in America, while Clairin went to a hermit-like seclusion in his home in the Midi.
When both returned to Paris they were no longer lovers, but they remained very good friends, and Clairin, until he died shortly after the Armistice, was one of the most devoted of the little court surrounding Sarah.
He was frequently a visitor at her house, and in his old age spent a few weeks of every year at her property at Belle Isle, off the coast of Brittany.
Clairin was a year older than Sarah Bernhardt. He possessed a nature very similar to hers.