“It is a lie!” he shouted angrily. “She asked me to come on the stage and sing the Marseillaise with her, and I said I would not, because I disapprove of the war and of the crazy Emperor who has declared it, as does every sensible man in all France. But I am not disloyal! I am not pro-German!”
Sarah refused to listen. “You hear him?” she cried. “He admits it himself! I will not appear with him again! I will not act with traitors!”
At this remark flung at him with the hiss of a whip-lash by the woman he loved and whose career he had made, Berton turned away hiding his face in his arm. Then he walked out of the theatre and was seen no more that night.
A famous journalist of the time, De Girardin, was making a fiery speech, the gist of which was that within a fortnight our troops must be in Berlin.
“A Berlin!” howled the crowd, mad with frenzy. And then, glorious in its full-toned strength, came the voice of Sarah, singing the Marseillaise.
She was standing at the back of the dress circle, and had not been noticed until she began to sing. She was dressed in a white robe with a green girdle—a costume taken from one of her plays—and standing there, as those inspiring notes issued from her splendid throat, she personified the very spirit of France.
“Allons, enfants, de la patrie ...”
The whole audience was on its feet singing, but ever above that volume of sound rose the golden tones of Sarah Bernhardt. Hers was not a singing voice, but now it rang out pure and clear as a bell.
Just as a crystal glass, tapped with the finger-nail, will be heard above the din of a great railway station, so was Sarah Bernhardt’s voice heard above the din and uproar of the Odéon that night.
When she left the theatre, bands of students seized her and carried her shoulder high along the Boulevard St. Michel, and across the Pont de la Cité to the Place de Notre Dame, where still another demonstration was in progress. Again she sang the Marseillaise, and then “Mourir pour la Patrie,” and other patriotic songs.