“You are a friend of Victor Hugo’s,” she said. “Go to him and persuade him that I must play Ruy Blas!”
She told me years afterwards: “I felt that it was to be the supreme effort of my life. Something within me told me that, if only I could play this masterpiece, both fame and fortune would come at once. I was so sure of this that I determined nothing should stand in my way—and no other artiste.”
Berton returned jubilant from his interview with Victor Hugo.
“The Master says you are toute indiquée!” he told the enchanted actress; “he has had you in mind from the beginning.”
Rehearsals lasted a month, and Victor Hugo was at each one of them, an indomitable figure of middle height, his grey wiry hair tumbling over his ears and collar. Generally he sat in the front row of the orchestra, but on occasions a chair was placed for him in the wings, and from there he would jump up excitedly whenever he saw something which disagreed with his theories as to how the play should be produced, and would spend valuable minutes trying to demonstrate the right way in which a passage should be rendered.
One evening, after rehearsals were over, he had a new idea concerning the part of Ruy Blas. Without stopping to think, he dispatched this hasty message to Sarah Bernhardt: “Come at once and we will talk it over.”
“What! Does he think I am his valet?” angrily exclaimed Sarah, and wrote as much to him. In an hour or so she received the whimsical reply: “No, mademoiselle, it is I who am your valet!—Victor Hugo.”
This, of course, appeased Sarah, and when they met the next day they were on cordial terms enough. Two days later Victor Hugo brought Sarah a huge bunch of roses, which he presented to “My Queen of Spain” (Sarah’s part in Ruy Blas was that of the Queen).
“I know where those roses came from!” declared Sarah, accepting them suspiciously.
“From my garden, mademoiselle!” said Victor Hugo, with a bow.