Our party got separated here, and only five of us managed to reach the Pont Neuf, which, crossing the Seine, led almost directly to the Odéon. I was being partly carried, partly dragged by my mother, and was so wildly excited that I felt no fatigue, in spite of the considerable distance we had come.
An empty fiacre passed. The poet, Robert de Montesquiou, then a boy of nineteen, but even at that time one of Sarah’s firm friends, hailed it. The cocher looked at him insolently.
“A l’Odéon!” said Robert.
“It is five francs!” replied the cocher.
The distance was not more than seven hundred yards, and the fare ordinarily should have been only one franc. De Montesquiou was indignant and started a violent protest, but suddenly the cocher caught sight of Sarah Bernhardt.
“It is ‘our Sarah’?” he exclaimed. “Then I’m a dog! Come, I will take you all, and for nothing!”
I remember that Sarah climbed up on the box next to the old coachman and gave him two resounding kisses, one on each bronzed cheek. It appeared that the cocher was a regular subscriber at the Odéon!
When we arrived at the theatre we hurried round to the stage door and trooped up into the wings. There we found Chilly, Duquesnel and others talking on the stage in loud voices. When they saw us, they set up a shout.
“Voilà Bernhardt!”
Chilly hurriedly explained that the Government had requested that the theatre should be reserved that night for a patriotic demonstration, at which some of its members would be present.