When these phrases reached our ears the Vicomte stopped suddenly. Then he raised his hat, and turned on his heel.
“I do not think I want to meet your Sarah!” he said shortly, and forthwith he disappeared from our party.
I recounted the incident to Sarah the next day, as we sat on deck of a steamer which was carrying us back to France.
“And he was a Frenchman!” she exclaimed. “Why, what you heard me say was nothing! I said a great deal more to the Crown Prince, and he only laughed!”
Sarah’s freedom of language was at times embarrassing.
Baron Magnus, the then German Minister in Denmark, was an old inhabitant of Paris, and had known Sarah in the days before the war. But since 1870 Sarah could not bear to look at a German.
When the baron got up at a banquet, therefore, and, raising a glass of champagne, jovially proposed her health, the actress could not restrain her anger. She sprang to her feet and raised her glass high in the air, to the astonishment of the King, the Queen and various other members of the Royal family who were seated round her—and probably, it must be admitted, to their secret amusement.
“I accept your toast, Monsieur the Minister of Prussia,” she cried, “but only on condition that you extend it to include the whole of La Belle France!”
Baron Magnus turned white. He could think of nothing to say, and he sat down. The band struck up the “Marseillaise” and then, courteously enough, considering what had passed, he got on his feet again.
Long afterwards, he and Sarah became very good friends. But he never tired of telling the story of how Sarah had startled a King and Queen and humbled an Imperial Ambassador.