I feel my pulse.... It is I.... I am not dreaming....
The boat stops opposite a red velvet tent and an invisible orchestra strikes up an air from the Châlet: “Arrêtons-nous ici.”
I smile at this quite French childishness. I get off ... and walk through the midst of a hedge of smiling, kind faces of sailors who offer me flowers.
Within the tent all the life savers are waiting for me, wearing on their broad chests the medals they have so well deserved.
Mr. Grosos, the president, reads to me the following address:
“Madame, as president, I have the honor to present to you a delegation from the Life Saving Society of Hâvre, who have come to welcome you and express their gratitude for the sympathy you have so warmly worded in your transatlantic dispatch.
“We have also come to congratulate you on the immense success that you have met with at every place you have visited during your adventurous journey. You have now conquered in two worlds an incontestable popularity and artistic celebrity, and your marvelous talent, added to your personal charms, has affirmed abroad that France is always the land of art and the birthplace of elegance and beauty.
“A yet distant echo of the words you spoke in Denmark, evoking a deep and sad souvenir, still strikes on our ears. It repeats that your heart is as French as your talent, for in the midst of the feverish and burning successes of the theater you have never forgotten to unite your patriotism to your artistic triumphs.
“Our life savers have charged me with expressing to you their admiration for the charming benefactor whose generous hand has spontaneously stretched itself out toward their poor but noble society. They wish to offer you these flowers, gathered from the soil of the mother country, on the land of France, where you will find them everywhere under your feet. They are worthy that you should accept them with favor, for they are presented to you by the bravest and most loyal of our life savers.”
It is said that my reply was very eloquent, but I cannot affirm that that reply was really made by me. I had lived for several hours in a state of overexcitement from successive emotions. I had taken no food, had no sleep. My heart had not ceased beating a moving and joyous charge. My brain had been filled with a thousand facts that had been piled up for seven months and narrated in two hours. This triumphant reception, that I was far from expecting after what had happened just before my departure, after having been so badly treated by the Paris press, after the incidents of my journey that had been always badly interpreted by several French papers—all these coincidences were of such different proportions that they seemed hardly credible. I preferred to remain in the latter dream that was so flattering to me.