Sarah Bernhardt as I knew her

by Mme. Pierre Berton

Their intimacy continued, but without the great passion of other days. Sarah was tender to him, but made him see that her days and nights belonged now to the wounded. Nevertheless, Berton complained that others had taken his place in her heart.

There were four men, in particular, who excited his jealousy. These were the Count of Kératry, under-secretary for food supplies; Paul de Remusat, one of the prevailing moderate elements in the new Government and a great friend of Thiers; Rochefort, who certainly had for Sarah a strange and somewhat uncanny attraction, in view of his violence and his dissolute character (Sarah says of him: “It was Rochefort who caused the downfall of the Empire”); and finally Captain O’Connor, a cavalryman, who was a much more serious competitor for Sarah’s affections than the other three. O’Connor will figure in these memoirs later on.

There is considerable doubt as to whether Count de Kératry was ever a lover of Sarah Bernhardt’s. He had known her since she was a child at Grandchamps, when he used to visit the Convent to spend an hour with a niece, who was a pupil there. Later, he had been introduced to her family, and by the time he received his commission as a lieutenant of cavalry and was sent to command a unit in the campaign of Mexico, had come to be a rather frequent visitor in the house in the rue Michodière. From then on Sarah Bernhardt did not see him until he returned, just before the Franco-Prussian war, and was given an appointment on the Staff. After the Revolution he was made a préfect, with special charge over the victualling of the city.

It was he who saw that Sarah’s hospital was so well supplied with food—well supplied, that is, in comparison with other hospitals of a similarly independent character. During the siege Sarah saw him frequently, and he went often to the Odéon.

He was greatly enamoured of the young actress, but they were both too busy to give much time to each other, and certainly their humane duties precluded any prolonged love-making. But Berton saw in the Count de Kératry’s frequent visits to Sarah an intrigue that threatened to oust him from his privileged place at her side, and he made many heated remonstrances to that effect.

Paul de Remusat, an author, playwright and educationalist, and withal a most supremely modest and unassuming man, was one of the real forces behind the revolution, but he was not one of the popular figures in it. He seldom spoke in public.

Sarah had been introduced to him, some months prior to the war, by the younger Dumas. She found inordinate pleasure in reading his writings, which were of an inspiring beauty. She would go to his modest apartment in the rue de Seine and sit on the floor at his feet, one arm over his knees, as he read to her his latest works.

It was to Paul de Remusat that Thiers, Favre, Arago, Crémieux, Gambetta, Jules Simon, Ferry, Picard, Pagès and the rest of the revolutionary committee came in the afternoon with their plan of action (that night the Empire fell). It was de Remusat who revised this plan, and advised them of the pitfalls that lay ahead.

He could have had anything in the gift of the new Government. If the times had not decreed that the President must be a military man—the honour eventually went to the Governor of Paris, General Trochu—there is no doubt in my mind that Paul de Remusat would have been offered the highest post possible in the new order of things. The fact that he had a “de” as prefix to his name was another drawback, for it only needed a “de” to convince some people of one’s royalist leanings.

Eventually, it was decided to make him Minister of Fine Arts, and a committee was sent to him with this idea in view. That evening the president of this committee, M. Théophile Besson, sent for Sarah and said to her, despairingly: “It is no use, we cannot move him. You are the only person on earth, mademoiselle, who can make him change his mind!” Sarah consented to do her best, and saw de Remusat the next day. He asked to be allowed twenty-four hours to think the matter over, and he then wrote to Sarah to this effect.