After what seemed an interminable wait in the hot, stifling auditorium of the Conservatoire, Sarah’s name was called. Trembling, she ascended to the stage. On the way she tried to loosen the painful ribbon about her head, with the result that it came unpinned and her glorious mass of red-gold hair tumbled forthwith about her face. Indeed when she mounted to the stage where the jury sat in uncompromising attitudes, her face could hardly be seen.
“And what will you recite?” asked the chairman, a man named Léataud.
“I have learned the part of Agnes, but I have no one to give me my cues,” said Sarah.
“Then what will you do?”
Sarah was at a loss, but she regained courage suddenly on seeing two of the jury smiling at her encouragingly.
“I will recite to you a fable: ‘The Two Pigeons,’” she said.
When she had finished, Professor Provost, one of the jury, asked that she should be accepted. “I will put her in my class,” he said. “The child has a voice of gold!”
This was the first occasion on which Sarah’s “golden voice” was thus referred to.
Sarah, who was eighth on the list at the Conservatoire, took no prize, but she was admitted! She was mad with joy. Her mother condescended to praise her a little. Mlle. de Brabender and Madame Guérard overwhelmed her with caresses. Little Sarah was a member of the Conservatoire! Her career had begun.
Sarah had no conspicuous success at the Conservatoire. She obtained indeed one second prize for comedy, but her great talent for the drama had not yet developed. With the exception of Camille Doucet—the jury voted unanimously that she could not be included among those to be given certificates of merit. Sarah, despite her second prize, returned home in tragic mood.