The publication of Sarah’s book “Dans les Nuages,” which was at once a defence of her actions, a scornful reply to her critics and a picturesque description of her flight in the balloon, brought down on her head still more criticism, and still further admonishment from M. Perrin, the director of the Comédie Française.
But now she lived a monarch in a little world apart. Her art while on the stage was such that even her sternest opponents were obliged to hold their tongues in reluctant admiration, while she now openly maintained the right to live her private life as she pleased. Every protest from Perrin brought forth the haughty reply that if he was dissatisfied she was perfectly willing to leave the Comédie Française for ever. What made him powerless in any struggle with her was the fact that the Comédie was a government institution, and that Sarah had friends in very high places.
She was a striking figure of a woman, as I remember her at this epoch.
Her extreme slenderness, accentuated by the exaggerated lacing of the clothes she wore, contrived to give her the impression of height; whereas she was in reality no taller than the normal person. Her complexion was naturally pale from her anæmia—a malady which had persisted—but, not content with the effect thus achieved, she must needs paint her face a chalk white, relieved only by the slender etching of her widely-separated eyebrows, and by a pair of cleverly-reddened lips. Her forehead was high and arched, and her hair was the same riotous and tangled mass of crinkled confusion which had made her remarkable as a child. Her eyes were the singularly lovely blue of the clear sky just after the dawn—light-coloured, but seemingly of illimitable depth.
When she was serious, they would be downcast, shielded by long, curving lashes, mysterious and almost oriental in their pensive languor. When she was interested, they would snap into life with an extraordinary vivacity and play of expression; when she was angry, which was often enough, actual sparks of blue fire seemed to dart from eyes that had miraculously grown into two large, burning pools of wrath. No man I ever saw, except Damala, ever long withstood the challenge of those eyes when Sarah, wistful and imperious, desired to have her way.
After an interview with her and an ineffectual attempt to discipline his wilful star, Perrin invariably ended his lecture by throwing up his hands, uttering a short word of mingled supplication and terror, and escaping into an inner office.
Sarah was a supreme conversationalist. I never knew anyone her match in ordinary talk. She could be eloquent on fifty current topics, and had something original and interesting to say about all of them. The fact that she could hold such men as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas fils, Georges Clairin, Gustave Doré, and others like them, enthralled by the sheer power of her personality as partly expressed by her skill in conversation, is proof enough of her many-sided genius.
She was the first great feminine adherent to the capricious cult of “je m’en fichisme,” which is best interpreted as an absolute disregard of convention and an existence studiously carried along the lines of “the individual before the crowd.”
Sarah was beautiful; she was brilliant. She was a genius; she was a hard-worker; she was prodigious in her handling of men—she seldom had less than a dozen famous ones around her—and her charm, as well as her antipathetic side, was due to her sublime belief in herself above everything and everybody.
Perrin, Got and other theatrical celebrities used to beg and plead with her to dress in quieter and less conspicuous ways which would be more in conformity with the fashion.