The girls began to take out my hair-pins, 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 hair-pins. This sympathy made me once more burst into tears.
Finally I stood up, triumphant, without any hair-pins and without any sausages. But my poor hair was very heavy with the pomade 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 round 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 hair-pins.
The competition had commenced, and I was the tenth on the list. I could not remember what I had to say. Madame Guérard moistened my temples with cold water, and Mlle. de Brabender, who had only just arrived, did not recognise me, and looked about for me everywhere. She had broken her leg nearly three months before, and had to hobble about on a crutch-stick, but she had resolved to come.
Madame Guérard was just beginning to tell her about the drama of the hair when my name echoed through the room: “Mademoiselle Chara Bernhardt!” It was Léautaud, who later on was prompter at the Comédie Française, and who had a strong accent peculiar to the natives of Auvergne. “Mademoiselle Chara Bernhardt!” I heard again, and then I sprang up without an idea in my mind and without uttering a word. I looked round for my partner who was to give me my cues, and together we made our entry.
SARAH BERNHARDT IN THE HANDS OF
HER COIFFEUR, BEFORE GOING TO
THE CONSERVATOIRE EXAMINATION.
HER MOTHER IS ON THE LEFT
I was surprised at the sound of my voice, which I did not recognise. 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.”