As was the case in all her love affairs, except that with Jules Lemaître, her high-strung temperament clashed frequently with that of Rostand, who was a wild and erratic youth.
He was in the habit of meeting Sarah and supping with her after the theatre. Sometimes they would go for long drives together, Sarah sitting and listening attentively, while Edmond declaimed his latest poems.
It was thus she heard for the first time the verse of L’Aiglon, which he and she created. She would criticise the dramatic construction of a play, and was no mean authority on verse. Rostand admitted afterwards that he owed everything to her shrewd coaching during those midnight drives through the Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne.
Once he arrived at the stage door of the new Sarah Bernhardt Theatre—the old Opéra-Comique, which Sarah had leased from the City of Paris—five minutes late. They had had something particularly important to talk over in regard to a forthcoming production, and Sarah could not brook delay.
She left him a short, imperious note stating that she would not produce his play, since he took so little interest in it, and, moreover, she did not wish to see him again!
The next morning, when Sarah left her house to take her accustomed ride in the Bois, she discovered a haggard figure sitting on the doorstep.
It was Rostand. He had stayed on the doorstep all night, hoping by thus humbling himself to be forgiven.
Sarah was struck by his devotion, but more by the fact that he was shivering with fever. She took him into the house, and had him put to bed in her private apartment, and for three days she ministered to him while he recovered from a severe cold.
She would not allow a domestic to approach the bedroom, even carrying Rostand his food and hot-water bottles with her own hands. During these three days she did not go near the theatre—and nobody in Paris knew where Rostand was!
It was during this sickness in Sarah’s house that Rostand conceived (as he admitted afterwards) the first idea for L’Aiglon, which he composed for and dedicated to Sarah. L’Aiglon, as everyone knows, is the story of the King of Rome, Napoleon’s son, who dies in exile.