On arriving at the Conservatoire, I hurried with my petite dame to the waiting room, while my mother went direct to the hall. When once I was in the waiting room I tore off the lace, and, seated on a bench, after relating the Odyssey of my hairdressing, I gave my head up to my companions. All of them adored and envied my hair, because it was so soft and light and golden. All of them took pity on my sorrow, and were touched by my ugliness. Their mothers, however, were spluttering in their own fat with joy.
The girls began to take out my hairpins, and one of them, Marie Lloyd, whom I liked best, took my head in her hands and kissed it affectionately.
“Oh, your beautiful hair, what have they done to it!” she exclaimed, pulling out the last of the hairpins. This sympathy made me once more burst into tears.
Finally, I stood up triumphant, without any hairpins and without any sausages. But my poor hair was heavy with the beef marrow the wretched man had put on it, and it was full of the partings he had made for the creation of the sausages. It fell now in mournful-looking, greasy flakes around my face. I shook my head for five minutes in mad rage. I then succeeded in making the hair more loose, and I put it up as well as I could with a couple of hairpins.
The competition had commenced, and I was the tenth to be called. I could not remember what I had to say. Mme. Guérard moistened my temples with cold water, and Mlle. De Brabender, who had only just arrived, did not recognize me, and was looking about for me everywhere. She had broken her leg nearly three months ago, and had to support herself on a crutch, but she had wished to come.
Mme. Guérard was just beginning to tell her about the drama of the hair when my name echoed through the room. “Mlle. Chara Bernhardt!” It was Leautaud, who later on was prompter at the Comédie Française, and who had a strong Auvergne accent. “Mlle. Chara Bernhardt!” I heard again, and I then sprang up without an idea in my mind and without uttering a word. I looked round for the pupil who was to give me my answers, and together we made our entry.
I was surprised at the sound of my voice, which I did not recognize. I had cried so much that it had affected my voice, and I spoke through my nose.
I heard a woman’s voice say:
“Poor child, she ought not to have been allowed to compete; she has an atrocious cold, her nose is running, and her face is swollen.”
I finished my scene, made my bow, and went away in the midst of very feeble and spiritless applause. I walked like a somnambulist, and on reaching Mme. Guérard and Mlle. De Brabender fainted away in their arms. Some one went to the hall in search of a doctor, and the rumor that “the little Bernhardt had fainted” reached my mother. She was sitting far back in a box bored to death.