Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard (The Game of Love and Luck), by Marivaux, was the piece in which Sarah made her début at the Odéon. Berton and Duquesnel were mortified, Chilly was triumphant: Sarah had failed!
There was no mistaking the failure. Scarcely any applause was vouchsafed the young actress and so conspicuous was her lack of success that the piece was withdrawn within a few weeks, after playing to half-empty houses.
Chilly wanted to break her contract, but Berton and Duquesnel restrained him. Berton gave it as his opinion that Sarah was made for tragedy, whereas the play by Marivaux was a comedy, and Sarah’s part obviously unsuited to her.
Among the famous people who were in the audience the night Sarah Bernhardt made her début at the Odéon was Alexandre Dumas the elder. After the play was over Sarah overheard Duquesnel ask him:
“What do you think of the young Sarah?”
“She has the head of a virgin and the body of a broomstick!” retorted Dumas, dryly.
Sarah was then earning the munificent sum of 100 francs (four pounds) a month. From the estate of her father she still received a small amount—not more than 200 francs monthly, and on this income was obliged to live.
For several months she worked as an understudy, Chilly obstinately refusing to consent to her taking any important rôles.
During this period the love of Pierre Berton for his erratic little protégée grew enormously. On more than one occasion he asked her to marry him, but Sarah refused, on the ground that it would be unfair to the woman who for years had lived with Berton as his wife, and who had presented him with four children.
The fact that Berton was willing and even anxious to abandon this woman (his wife in all but name) and his family indicates the depth of his passion for Sarah Bernhardt. He confessed to me in later life after our marriage that “the days that Sarah Bernhardt consented to devote to me were like pages from immortality. One felt that one could not die!”