“You understand,” he said to me. “You fall in the water—paff!—you stay like this.” Hereupon he pretended to sit down, rising and sinking with the movement of the waves, his two hands in front of him laid upon the imaginary sea, and his neck stretched like that of a tortoise in order to keep his head above water.
“You see, you have now been in the water for two hours,” he explained, “and you want to get back your strength. You take a pin and prick an egg, like this. You take your lump of sugar and eat it; that is as good as a quarter of a pound of meat.” He then threw the broken bladder overboard, and from the packing case brought out another, which he fastened to the life-belt. He had evidently thought of everything. I was petrified with amazement. A few of my friends had gathered round, hoping for one of La Quenelle’s mad freaks, but they had never expected anything like this one.
M. Mayer, one of our impresarii, fearing a scandal of too absurd a kind, dispersed the people who were gathering round us. I did not know whether to be angry or to laugh, but the jeering, unjust speech of one of my friends roused my pity for this poor Quenelle. I thought of the hours he had spent in planning, combining, and then manufacturing his ridiculous machine. I was touched by the anxiety and affection which had prompted the invention of this life saving apparatus, and I held out my hand to my poor Quenelle, saying, “Be off now, quickly; the boat is just going to start.”
He kissed the hand held out to him in a friendly way, and hurried off. I then called my steward, Claude, and I said, “As soon as we are out of sight of land, throw that case and all it contains into the sea.”
The departure of the boat was accompanied by shouts of “Hurrah! Au revoir! Success! Good luck!” There was a waving of hands, handkerchiefs floating in the air, and kisses thrown haphazard to every one.
But what was really fine, and a sight I shall never forget, was our landing at Folkestone. There were thousands of people there, and it was the first time I had ever heard the cry of “Vive Sarah Bernhardt!”
I turned my head and saw before me a pale young man, the ideal face of Hamlet. He presented me with a gardenia. I was destined to admire him later on as Hamlet played by Forbes Robertson. We passed on through a crowd offering us flowers and shaking hands, and I soon saw that I was more favoured than the others. This slightly embarrassed me, but I was delighted all the same. One of my comrades who was just near, and with whom I was not a favourite, said to me in a spiteful tone:
“They’ll make you a carpet of flowers soon.”
“Here is one!” exclaimed a young man, throwing an armful of lilies on the ground in front of me.
I stopped short, rather confused, not daring to walk on these white flowers, but the crowd pressing on behind compelled me to advance, and the poor lilies had to be trodden under foot.