But when we played in Montpellier, the students were so indignant that they demolished the interior of the theatre, and we had to steal out of the city in closed cabs during the night in order to escape their wrath!
Since that day Pierrot, Assassin has not been played.
All this time she had kept up her friendship with most of the people who had surrounded her during her years at the Comédie Française in the seventies, and among these was Gustave Doré, the immortal illustrator of the Bible and of Dante’s “Inferno.”
Her romance with Gustave Doré was one of the really illuminating episodes of her life.
One night she was playing Clorinde, in L’Aventurière. Doré, who was in the audience, was so charmed that he sent her the next day the original sketches he had made for the Gospel of St. John, considered among his finest work. In reply, she wrote to him and asked him to come to her dressing-room after the performance.
When Doré came, he had scarcely opened the door before she characteristically threw herself into his arms and kissed him on both cheeks. Doré was so astounded that, for a moment, he could not speak. This was the first occasion on which he had seen Bernhardt at close quarters, and in fact it was the first time he had ever been behind the scenes of a theatre.
When Doré did not move nor speak, so great was his astonishment, Sarah flew into a temper.
“Ah, you regret, you are sorry you sent me your pictures!” she stormed. “You despise me.”
Doré threw himself at her feet, and kissed her satin slippers.
“Madame,” he said simply, “I do not permit myself to love a being so far above me; I adore!”