Damala then returned to his abandoned diplomatic career, but his habits soon forced him to give up active work.
Despite the fact that she had been born a Jewess and was only baptised into the Catholic faith, Sarah had strict ideas of a sort about religion. She refused to divorce Damala, contenting herself with a semi-legal separation whereby, in return for certain sums she sent to him monthly, he agreed never to re-enter her life.
Five years later, however, Damala sent a message to Sarah saying that he was dying in Marseilles and imploring her to forgive him and take him back.
The strength of the love which she must once have borne him is shown by the fact that, immediately she received this message, she abandoned her performances in Paris, rushed to the bedside of her husband—whom she found wasted from disease and drugs—and nursed him back again into some semblance of health.
Damala promised to leave morphine alone and they went on tour together; but the drug, to which Jeanne Bernhardt had already succumbed, proved too strong for him.
Once, at Milan, he was nearly arrested for exhibiting himself naked at the Hotel de Ville (which is an hotel and not a town hall). His body was a mass of sores occasioned by the drug.
I was a member of the company on the famous tour Sarah made with Damala in Turkey. We played in Constantinople and Smyrna, and on taking the boat for Cairo we ran into a terrible storm.
Three times we tried to get into the Bay of Alexandria, and each time failed. Finally the ship was anchored until calmer weather came. Sarah was violently sick, and, on recovering, asked the steward to bring her the delicacies she had had brought on board for her own special use at table.
These delicacies included several cases of champagne and others of fruit and pâté de foie gras, of which Sarah was particularly fond.
Imagine her fury when the steward returned with the information that Damala had eaten all the fruit and had consumed all the champagne, and that nothing was left for Sarah except the regular rough fare of the steamer.