I made as if to go, but Sarah stayed me. “Wait, we will see what he looks like!” she said.
It was thus that I was present at the first meeting between Sarah Bernhardt and Edmond Rostand.
Sarah had her own fashion of greeting visitors. Her leg pained her if she used it too much—the phlebitis persisted—so she would remain seated. When anyone was announced—especially a stranger—she would hold out her hand with a word of greeting, bid him sit down, and then cup her chin on her hands and look at him steadily, without a trace of expression.
Few men there were—or women either, for that matter—who could withstand the hypnotic appeal of those glorious blue eyes, which at fifty retained all the sparkle and fire of youth, together with the mysterious inscrutability of approaching age!
Sarah received Edmond in her customary manner, with myself an interested and, secretly, much amused spectator.
Mme. Bernhardt’s Sitting-room at her Last Home, 56, Boulevard Pereire, Paris.
Photo, Henri Manuel.]
Rostand sat down, placed his hat and gloves on the floor beside him, and then turned to await Sarah’s instructions to proceed.
I saw then why the door-keeper had called him a “wild man.” His hair was at least five inches long and was in the most indescribable tangle, as though it had not been brushed for months. It was matted over his forehead, on which beads of perspiration were standing.