Why did I want to do anything else but act, since that was my career?
Why did I always want to be before the public?
SARAH BERNHARDT AS DONA SOL
IN HERNANI
Perrin came to see me one day when I was very ill. He began to preach. “You are killing yourself, my dear child,” he said. “Why do you go in for sculpture, painting, &c.? Is it to prove that you can do it?”
“Oh, no, no,” I answered; “it is merely to create a necessity for staying here.”
“I don’t understand,” said Perrin, listening very attentively.
“This is how it is. I have a wild desire to travel, to see something else, to breathe another air, and to see skies that are higher than ours and trees that are bigger—something different, in short. I have therefore had to create for myself some tasks which will hold me to my chains. If I did not do this, I feel that my desire to see other things in the world would win the day, and I should do something foolish.”
This conversation was destined to go against me some years later, when the Comédie brought a law-suit against me.
The Exhibition of 1878 put the finishing stroke to the state of exasperation that Perrin and some of the artistes of the theatre had conceived against me. They blamed me for everything—for my painting, my sculpture, and my health. I had a terrible scene with Perrin, and it was the last one, for from that time forth we did not speak to each other again; a formal bow was the most that we exchanged afterwards.