Her only playmate, almost as unhappy as herself, was another little girl named Titine, the daughter of a working jeweller, who lived on the floor above; her playgrounds were the busy streets of Paris; her language the argot of the slums. No one dreamed of sending her to school, which was not then compulsory.
There is very little doubt that the world would never have known Sarah Bernhardt if this state of affairs had lasted another year. The child was fast going into tuberculosis, and could not even summon strength for the fits of temper that had distinguished her up till this time.
I have said that her only playmate was Titine, the daughter of the jeweller, but there was another for a month or so—the son of the butcher at the street corner.
One afternoon the janitor’s wife returned from an errand and heard screams coming from the loge. Hastening there she discovered the butcher’s son, aged six, stripped to the waist, and the diminutive Sarah laying on to him with a strap.
“I am playing at being a Spaniard,” she said in explanation, Spaniards having then a great reputation in France for cruelty. The incident is interesting in the light of later incidents in her career, when charges of callousness and cruelty were brought against her. For myself I have never doubted that a streak of the primitive existed in Sarah. But, unlike others, I believe that she was the better for it, for out of it grew her single-mindedness and her will to conquer.
During all this time Sarah’s mother gave no sign of life, despite repeated efforts on the part of the old nurse to find her. In fact, the child’s board had not been paid for nearly two years and, with her delicate health, she was becoming a charge which the couple could ill afford. Deliverance from this state of affairs came unexpectedly. One day Rosine, Sarah’s aunt, paid a visit to a neighbouring house. Sarah, who was playing in the courtyard of the building at the moment her aunt arrived, immediately recognised her, although the two had not met for more than a year.
“Tante Rosine! Tante Rosine!”
The extravagantly dressed woman turned, hardly believing her ears.
“It is not?—why, it is Sarah, the daughter of my sister Youle!”
“Yes, yes! It is I, Sarah! Oh, take me away—take me away! They suffocate me, these walls—always walls! I cannot see the sky! Take me away! I want to see the sky again, and the flowers...!”