Another was with the daughter of a Vaucluse magistrate, who left her parents and a comfortable home to follow Damala to Paris, where he deserted her when her baby was born. This girl wrote a book exposing Damala, after he had married Sarah Bernhardt, but the book was suppressed. I never heard what became of her. Perhaps the Seine could tell.
Young, beautiful and a dare-devil, Damala, when he met Bernhardt, was a figure to delight the gods of evil. There was no vice to which he was not addicted, no evil thing which he would not attempt. His Oriental parties, at which those taking part divested themselves of their clothing and plunged naked into baths of champagne, were the talk of Paris.
It was inevitable that Bernhardt, the famous actress, and Damala, the almost equally notorious bon viveur, should eventually meet. Each knew the reputation of the other, and their curiosity was only the more whetted thereby.
Each delighted to play with fire, and especially with the dangerously devastating fire which smoulders eternally within the human soul.
Bernhardt prided herself on her ability to conquer men, to reduce them to the level of slaves; Damala vaunted his ability as a hunter and a spoiler of women.
No man, said Bernhardt, could long resist her imperious will; no woman, said Damala, could long remain impervious to his fatal charm—and to prove it he would exhibit with pride the clattering bones in his closet.
Like grains of mercury in a bowl of sand, their two natures were inevitably attracted towards each other. Both were serenely confident of the issue of that coming clash of wills.
Damala boasted to his friends that, as soon as he looked at her, the great Sarah Bernhardt would be counted on his long list of victims; and Bernhardt was no less certain that she had only to command for Damala to succumb.
She was all woman, feline in her charm and attraction for men, but herculean in the labour which was in reality the greater half of her life. Damala was only half a man; he had the exterior, the sexual attraction of one, but he lacked the vital power to live and to endure by the labour of his hands and brain.
He was beautiful and brilliant, but only the shell was left of his manhood, which he had burned out years before his time, for he was younger than Sarah by three years. Sarah, despite all the marvellous things which she had already accomplished, had the best of her span of life before her. Damala was indolent, unambitious except as regards women, hot-headed, quick to take up an insult, and an unscrupulous fiend when his passions were aroused. He had the presence and manners of a gentleman and the mind of a chimpanzee.