“Mais, ma mignonne,” remonstrated the angel, “I cannot see you if you hide like that! Come!”
My mother, excusably vexed, dragged me from my hiding-place.
“Come! come!” she said sharply; “speak to Mademoiselle! Go and kiss her!”
Thus commanded in a tone I knew too well, I advanced a step and stood there shyly, not daring to lift my head. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by two arms and a mass of golden hair, which literally covered my head and shoulders as Sarah Bernhardt caught me to her.
“La pauvre petite ... la pauvre mignonne!” she kept repeating, punctuating the words with hearty hugs and an embrace on both cheeks. Then, holding me at arm’s length:
“So, you want to be an actress?”
Now this, to my knowledge, was the first occasion on which I had ever heard that I was to be an actress. Certainly I had never mentioned the idea to anyone, least of all to my mother, who was not a person to whom one made confidences. I stood there dumb.
“Ma foi,” ejaculated the angel, in her glorious voice, “she is pretty enough!”
There followed a rapid exchange of remarks between my mother and Sarah Bernhardt—the connection between whom I have never been able to fathom—and during these I was ordered to sit on the chair (my legs did not touch the ground) and told not to open my mouth. As if I would have dared to! But I had become bold enough to feast my eyes on the divinity, and to study her at leisure.
How easily that first childish impression of Sarah comes to me now, fifty years later!