Although it was to be nearly a quarter of a century before the final curtain fell, Sarah found her energy, though not her fortitude, diminishing. Further and further her sentimental life was being pushed into the background, as the cares of business and of management weighed on her.
She moved to a little red-brown house on the Boulevard Pereire, and there at last, after all her wanderings amongst the different quarters of Paris, she found a permanent home. Into it she brought the accumulated treasures of a lifetime spent in travel, including gifts that had come to her from every corner of the globe.
She installed herself in this house alone with a secretary, for her son was married now and living in a street near-by, in a home of his own.
Here also she brought the waiter Claude, who loved to call himself “l’écuyer de Sarah Bernhardt,” or “Sarah Bernhardt’s butler,” and Félicie, her maid.
Sarah was very particular over her table. She insisted on the best. Although she herself ate frugally, her guests were always given the choicest that could be procured.
Sarah was a vegetarian—she remained so, in fact, all her life although on one or two occasions perhaps she may have pecked at a bird, a slice of venison, or a similar dainty.
In the morning, at eight o’clock, she would partake of an orange, a light roll, and drink a cup of weak tea. The orange-for-breakfast habit she acquired in America, where fruit customarily precedes the first meal of the day.
Then she would work until noon, when she would be served with her only real meal—an omelette, perhaps, and a piece of fish, and more fruit. Until she was thirty-four she never tasted cheese—it offended, she said, her æsthetic sense!—but when she grew old, a light gruyère or a Pont-l’Evêque was a favourite dish of hers.
At five in the afternoon she had an invariable glass of champagne, and at seven an œuf soufflé or something similarly light. For years her diet was prescribed by doctors, and never a week went by after 1890 that Sarah Bernhardt was not examined by a physician.
Despite the accident to her leg and the subsequent phlebitis, which grew more serious with every recurrent attack, Sarah continued to act in the plays she produced at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. One after another she produced L’Aiglon, Hamlet, La Sorcière, Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc, La Belle au Bois Dormant, La Beffa, La Courtisane de Corinthe, Lucrèce Borgia, Les Bouffons, and Jeanne Dorée.