That day, Monday, the twenty-sixth of March, Victor Hugo died for a second time.
Even before she died, Sarah Bernhardt had outstripped Glory and had become Legend.
Nothing of hers had faltered: not her intelligence, not her heart, not her talent, not her genius. She was complete.
She was the glory and the light of the French theatre. The light that is extinguished will not flame again. How dark it seems!
Dead, she is greater than in life. Who of us would not accept her luminous night?
Her epitaph, by Jacques Richepin:
†✝
CI-GIT SARAH
QUI SURVIVRA
THE END
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