Sarah Bernhardt as I knew her

by Mme. Pierre Berton

She was exhausted when she reached home, and had caught a bad cold, which kept her indoors for several days. During this period, however, messengers arrived almost every hour bringing her the news.

Paris, they said, was full of marching troops. The city was still in the throes of excitement. The Opéra was giving patriotic performances every night, at which Marie Sass was singing the Marseillaise from the balcony, so that all Paris could join in.

The Emperor had gone to the Front. The first clash had occurred sixty miles south of Mayence.

The theatres were still open, but there was talk of closing them. The actors were organising a volunteer corps, and some had gone already to the front, but there was a lack of uniforms.

MacMahon had sent word from Reichshoffen that all was well; the morale was fine; they would be in Berlin in a few weeks!

The papers were talking about a rumoured big victory. The Germans in Paris were not to be interned, but were to be kept to do the work of the city.

Sarah Bernhardt shared the popular belief that victory was in sight, that the war was all but over. All the newspapers, every lounger on the boulevards said it—so why should she not believe it to be true?

She went on playing as usual at the Odéon, singing the Marseillaise whenever requested to do so, but she adhered to her resolution not to play with Pierre Berton; and Duquesnel, deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, had carefully arranged the bill so that they would not be called upon to act in the same pieces.

The two seldom met and never spoke. Berton came rarely to the theatre; he was engaged in secret work, which some declared was of a revolutionary nature, but it turned out later that he had organised a corps of volunteers amongst the theatrical people out of work, and was drilling them on the fortifications! Sarah did not know of this at the time.

Victor Hugo, of course, had disappeared from Paris, where his last visit had been made only under pain of instant arrest, if seen; for he had been banished from the capital for his revolutionary writings. But among the papers of Hugo, which were found at his death, was a letter from Pierre Berton, written in August 1870, a month after the declaration of war, and smuggled out of Paris, in which Berton appealed to Hugo to “return and save France!”