Sarah told a story of one man, a corporal, who taunted her on his arrival with the words: “Oh ho! I see the stories were true! You have had nothing to eat for so long that you are a skeleton!”
This uncomplimentary allusion to Sarah’s slimness angered her excessively, but she went on bandaging the man’s leg, which was broken. The next day the corporal was astonished at being served with chicken soup for his dinner. On the following one he was given boiled eggs and some young lamb.
“Chicken, eggs and lamb in a starving city!” he exclaimed. “Why, you have everything you want! All these stories of a starving Paris, then, are untrue?”
He did not know that Sarah’s own dinner for days had been black bread and beans, and that she had not eaten meat for more than a month! Whatever delicacies were brought to the hospital were for her wounded.
Her face grew thinner, but took on an added beauty. She did not spare her frail body, but worked from early morning until late at night. More than once, when an exceptionally late convoy of wounded arrived, she worked all night as well.
Her character became stronger and nobler; forged in the fires of suffering, the metal rang true. “La Bernhardt” became a password of homage among the soldiers. From a careless gamine, flattered by the adulation of the multitude, she became a serious woman, striving only for one thing: the alleviation of suffering among the soldiers who were giving their all for their country.
It might be said that the war came at an opportune moment in Sarah Bernhardt’s career. It demonstrated to her that, despite the plaudits of Paris and the flattery of the multitude, she was only an ineffectual morsel of the universe. It served to tame her conceit, to teach her how insignificant individual success and glory are compared to the welfare or suffering of a nation.
Her character became more subdued, her fits of temper less violent and more rare. Her beauty had not suffered, however; rather had it been enhanced. Her eyes, always enigmatic, had themselves gained something of the sentiment which animated her being. Dressed in the white of a military nurse, with the red-and-green cross on either arm and on her hooded cap, she was ethereally lovely.
She used to go round begging overcoats from her rich acquaintances. The Odéon was large, coal scarce and heating difficult. It became a proverb among the men she knew: “Don’t go down to the Odéon with your overcoat on, or you will lose it: ‘la Bernhardt’ will take it for her wounded!”
Nevertheless, they were generous to her. The Ministry of War, established in the Palace of the Tuileries, allowed her the same rations as those allowed to the regular hospitals—and, in fact, Sarah’s personal appeals probably obtained for her something extra.