“And that was all?”
“That was all—except that he asked that I should bring the matter to your attention.”
Sarah laughed. “I told Dumas that he would one day beg me to play this thing for him,” she said, “and you may tell him that if he wants me to, he must do just that—beg!”
Berton must have taken the message diplomatically to Dumas, for the next day the latter was announced at Sarah’s house.
I was not present at the interview, but at the end of it Sarah informed us that La Dame aux Camélias was to be included in our répertoire.
Knowing Sarah’s temperament and her obstinacy, I presume Dumas begged. At any rate, the book of the play, as it was placed in our hands shortly afterwards, contained all the original corrections which she had made and which Dumas had at first ignored.
We produced La Dame (as it was always called) at Brussels, whither we had gone on the earnest representations of King Léopold, who was still greatly enamoured of Sarah.
In Brussels La Dame obtained no success whatever. The Belgians much preferred Adrienne Lecouvreur and Froufrou. It was in the last-named play that Sarah had scored her biggest success in London, on her second visit as an independent artiste. Sarcey, who had written what he called “Sarah’s Epitaph” when she left the Comédie, saying that it was “time to send naughty children to bed,” was compelled to make a special journey to London in order to write reviews of Sarah’s extraordinary productions there.
Instead of her light becoming dimmer, it blazed higher and higher with each month that separated her from her “imprisonment” at the Comédie Française.
Yes ... imprisonment was what Sarah considered it.