Of average height, exceptionally slim, with blue eyes alternately flashing wit and fire, and invariably costumed in the latest fashion, Sarah, as she neared her majority, was in danger, despite her great talent, of falling into that bottomless pit which still exists in Paris for beautiful girls, and out of which it is so difficult to climb.
She was a member of one of the fastest sets of a fast city, and only a miracle could have been expected to save her. Her health was bad, she had frequent spells of coughing, and the tell-tale flush of fever was constantly on her cheeks. To all admonitions, however, she would reply that, if her life was to be a short one, she had better enjoy it to the full while there was yet time.
But the needful miracle happened. As the result of an ardent love affair, almost certainly with a man of princely family, she gave birth to a boy, whom she named Maurice.
As in her own case, the accouchement was a difficult one, and complications ensued which rendered her recovery doubtful. The child was under-sized but robust, and from his birth he resembled his mother.
Motherhood to Sarah was at once a boon and a scourge that whipped her flagging consciousness of right and wrong.
It brought her face to face with the hard realities of the pathways of error, but it gave her the strength of character she had lacked and which was to lead her up from and out of these dangerous pathways. It provided her with the one thing that had been so far lacking in her character.
Motherhood gave Sarah Bernhardt ambition.
If from then on she became greedy of praise and publicity, she at the same time became a strenuous worker; if she was hard with those whom she used as stepping-stones, she was harder with herself; if she allowed her tongue to become caustic and her manner overbearing, it was because life had been revealed to her in its veritable aspect, and because she realised the supreme necessity of building a wall between herself and her past.
Intolerant of criticism, exquisite in her art, mighty in labour, Sarah Bernhardt lavished on her tiny son a love she had never believed she could feel for any human being.
Every aim of her existence was to provide for him while he was young the shield of respectability she herself had never known.