pallor touch my cheeks.
When events occur which disturb my life, I always have a movement of
recoil. I cling for a second to what is, and then I fling myself
headlong into what is to be. It is like a gymnast who clings first to
his trapeze bar in order to fling himself afterwards with full force
into space. In one second what now is becomes for me what was, and I
love it with tender emotion as something dead. But I adore what is to be
without seeking even to know about it, for what is to be is the unknown,
the mysterious attraction. I always fancy that it will be something
unheard of, and I shudder from head to foot in delicious uneasiness. I
receive quantities of letters, and it seems to me that I never receive
enough. I watch them accumulating just as I watch the waves of the sea.
What are they going to bring me, these mysterious envelopes, large,
small, pink, blue, yellow, white? What are they going to fling upon the
rock, these great wild waves, dark with seaweed? What sailor-boy’s
corpse? What remains of a wreck? What are these little brisk waves going
to leave on the beach, these reflections of a blue sky, little laughing
waves? What pink “sea-star”? What mauve anemone? What pearly shell?
So I never open my letters immediately. I look at the envelopes, try to
recognise the handwriting and the seal; and it is only when I am quite
certain from whom the letter comes that I open it. The others I leave my
secretary to open or a kind friend, Suzanne Seylor. My friends know this
so well that they always put their initials in the corner of their
envelopes.
At that time I had no secretary, but _mon petit Dame_ served me as such.
I looked at the envelope a long time, and gave it at last to Madame
Guérard.
“It is a letter from M. Perrin, director of the Comédie Française,” she
said. “He asks if you can fix a time to see him on Tuesday or Wednesday
afternoon at the Comédie Française or at your own house.”
“Thanks. What day is it to-day?” I asked.
“Monday,” she replied.
I then installed Madame Guérard at my desk, and asked her to reply that
I would go there the following day at three o’clock.
I was earning very little at that time at the Odéon. I was living on
what my father had left me—that is, on the transaction made by the Hâvre
notary—and not much remained. I therefore went to see Duquesnel and
showed him the letter.
“Well, what are you going to do?” he asked.
“Nothing. I have come to ask your advice.”
“Oh well, I advise you to remain at the Odéon. Besides, your engagement
does not terminate for another year, and I shall not allow you leave!”
“Well, raise my salary, then,” I said. “I am offered twelve thousand
francs a year at the Comédie. Give me fifteen thousand here and I will
stay, for I do not want to leave.”
“Listen to me,” said the charming manager in a friendly way. “You know
that I am not free to act alone. I will do my best, I promise you.” And
Duquesnel certainly kept his word. “Come here to-morrow before going to
the Comédie, and I will give you Chilly’s reply. But take my advice, and
if he obstinately refuses to increase your salary, do not leave; we
shall find some way.... And besides—— Anyhow, I cannot say any more.”
I returned the following day according to arrangement.
I found Duquesnel and Chilly in the managerial office. Chilly began at
once somewhat roughly:
“And so you want to leave, Duquesnel tells me. Where are you going? It
is most stupid, for your place is here. Just consider, and think it over
for yourself. At the Gymnase they only give modern pieces, dressy plays.
That is not your style. At the Vaudeville it is the same. At the Gaîté
you would spoil your voice. You are too distinguished for the Ambigu.”
I looked at him without replying. I saw that his partner had not spoken
to him about the Comédie Française. He felt awkward, and mumbled:
“Well then, you are of my opinion?”
“No,” I answered; “you have forgotten the Comédie.”
He was sitting in his big arm-chair, and he burst out laughing.
“Ah no, my dear girl,” he said, “you must not tell me that. They’ve had
enough of your queer character at the Comédie. I dined the other night
with Maubant, and when some one said that you ought to be engaged at the
Comédie Française he nearly choked with rage. I can assure you the great
tragedian did not show much affection for you.”
“Oh well, you ought to have taken my part,” I exclaimed, irritated. “You
know very well that I am a most serious member of your company.”
“But I did take your part,” he said, “and I added even that it would be
a very fortunate thing for the Comédie if it could have an artiste with
your will power, which perhaps might relieve the monotonous tone of the
house; and I only spoke as I thought, but the poor tragedian was beside
himself. He does not consider that you have any talent. In the first
place, he maintains that you do not know how to recite verse. He
declares that you make all your _a_’s too broad. Finally, when he had no
arguments left he declared that as long as he lives you will never enter
the Comédie Française.”
I was silent for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of the probable
result of my experiment. Finally coming to a decision, I murmured
somewhat waveringly:
“Well then, you will not give me a higher salary?”
“No, a thousand times no!” yelled Chilly. “You will try to make me pay
up when your engagement comes to an end, and then we shall see. But I
have your signature until then. You have mine, too, and I hold to our
engagement. The Théâtre Français is the only one that would suit you
beside ours, and I am quite easy in my mind with regard to that
theatre.”
“You make a mistake perhaps,” I answered. He got up brusquely and came
and stood opposite me, his two hands in his pockets. He then said in an
odious and familiar tone:
“Ah, that’s it, is it? You think I am an idiot, then?”
I got up too, and said coldly, pushing him gently back, “I think you are
a triple idiot.” I then hurried away towards the staircase, and all
Duquesnel’s shouting was in vain. I ran down the stairs two at a time.
On arriving under the Odéon arcade I was stopped by Paul Meurice, who
was just going to invite Duquesnel and Chilly, on behalf of Victor Hugo,
to a supper to celebrate the one hundredth performance of _Ruy Blas_.
“I have just come from your house,” he said. “I have left you a few
lines from Victor Hugo.”
“Good, good; that’s all right,” I replied, getting into my carriage. “I
shall see you to-morrow then, my friend.”
“Good Heavens, what a hurry you are in!” he said.
“Yes!” I replied, and then, leaning out of the window, I said to my
coachman, “Drive to the Comédie Française.”
I looked at Paul Meurice to wish him farewell. He was standing stupefied
on the arcade steps.
On arriving at the Comédie I sent my card to Perrin, and five minutes
later was ushered in to that icy mannikin. There were two very distinct
personages in this man. The one was the man he was himself, and the
other the one he had created for the requirements of his profession.
Perrin himself was gallant, pleasant, witty, and slightly timid; the
mannikin was cold, and somewhat given to posing.
I was first received by Perrin the mannikin. He was standing up, his
head bent, bowing to a woman, his arm outstretched to indicate the
hospitable arm-chair. He waited with a certain affectation until I was
seated before sitting down himself. He then picked up a paper-knife, in
order to have something to do with his hands, and in a rather weak
voice, the voice of the mannikin, he remarked:
“Have you thought it over, Mademoiselle?”
“Yes, Monsieur, and here I am to give my signature.”
Before he had time to give me any encouragement to dabble with the
things on his desk, I drew up my chair, picked up a pen, and prepared to
sign the paper. I did not take enough ink at first, and I stretched my
arm out across the whole width of the writing table, and dipped my pen
this time resolutely to the bottom of the ink-pot. I took too much ink,
however, this time, and on the return journey a huge spot of it fell on
the large sheet of white paper in front of the mannikin.
He bent his head, for he was slightly short-sighted, and looked for a
moment like a bird when it discovers a hemp-seed in its grain. He then
proceeded to put aside the blotted sheet.
“Wait a minute, oh, wait a minute!” I exclaimed, seizing the inky paper.
“I want to see whether I am doing right or not to sign. If that is a
butterfly I am right, and if anything else, no matter what, I am wrong.”
I took the sheet, doubled it in the middle of the enormous blot, and
pressed it firmly together. Emile Perrin thereupon began to laugh,
giving up his mannikin attitude entirely. He leaned over to examine the
paper with me, and we opened it very gently just as one opens one’s hand
after imprisoning a fly. When the paper was spread open, in the midst of
its whiteness a magnificent black butterfly with outspread wings was to
be seen.
“Well then,” said Perrin, with nothing of the mannikin left, “we were
quite right in signing.”
After this we talked for some time, like two friends who meet again, for
this man was charming and very fascinating, in spite of his ugliness.
When I left him we were friends and delighted with each other.
I was playing in _Ruy Blas_ that night at the Odéon. Towards ten o’clock
Duquesnel came to my dressing-room.
“You were rather rough on that poor Chilly,” he said. “And you really
were not nice. You ought to have come back when I called you. Is it
true, as Paul Meurice tells us, that you went straight to the Théâtre
Français?”
“Here, read for yourself,” I said, handing him my engagement with the
Comédie.
Duquesnel took the paper and read it.
“Will you let me show it to Chilly?” he asked.
“Show it him, certainly,” I replied.
He came nearer, and said in a grave, hurt tone:
“You ought never to have done that without telling me first. It shows a
lack of confidence I do not deserve.”
He was right, but the thing was done. A moment later Chilly arrived,
furious, gesticulating, shouting, stammering in his anger.
“It is abominable!” he said. “It is treason, and you had not even the
right to do it. I shall make you pay damages.”
As I felt in a bad humour, I turned my back on him, and apologised as
feebly as possible to Duquesnel. He was hurt, and I was a little
ashamed, for this man had given me nothing but proofs of kindliness, and
it was he who, in spite of Chilly and many other unwilling people, had
held the door open for my future.
Chilly kept his word, and brought an action against me and the Comédie.
I lost, and had to pay six thousand francs damages to the managers of
the Odéon.
A few weeks later Victor Hugo invited the artistes who performed in _Ruy
Blas_ to a big supper in honour of the one hundredth performance. This
was a great delight to me, as I had never been present at a supper of
this kind.
I had scarcely spoken to Chilly since our last scene. On the night in
question he was placed at my right, and we had to get reconciled. I was
seated to the right of Victor Hugo, and to his left was Madame Lambquin,
who was playing the Camerara Mayor, and Duquesnel was next to Madame
Lambquin. Opposite the illustrious poet was another poet, Théophile
Gautier, with his lion’s head on an elephant’s body. He had a brilliant
mind, and said the choicest things with a horse laugh. The flesh of his
fat, flabby, wan face was pierced by two eyes veiled by heavy lids. The
expression of them was charming, but far away. There was in this man an
Oriental nobility choked by Western fashion and customs. I knew nearly
all his poetry, and I gazed at him with affection—the fond lover of the
beautiful.
It amused me to imagine him dressed in superb Oriental costumes. I could
see him lying down on huge cushions, his beautiful hands playing with
gems of all colours; and some of his verses came in murmurs to my lips.
I was just setting off with him in a dream that was infinite, when a
word from my neighbour, Victor Hugo, made me turn towards him.
What a difference! He was just himself, the great poet—the most ordinary
of beings except for his luminous forehead. He was heavy-looking,
although very active. His nose was common, his eyes lewd, and his mouth
without any beauty; his voice alone had nobility and charm. I liked to
listen to him whilst looking at Théophile Gautier.
I was a little embarrassed, though, when I looked across the table, for
at the side of the poet was an odious individual, Paul de St. Victor.
His cheeks looked like two bladders from which the oil they contained
was oozing out. His nose was sharp and like a crow’s beak, his eyes
evil-looking and hard; his arms were too short, and he was too stout. He
looked like a jaundice.
He had plenty of wit and talent, but he employed both in saying and
writing more harm than good. I knew that this man hated me, and I
promptly returned him hatred for hatred.
In answer to the toast proposed by Victor Hugo thanking every one for
such zealous help on the revival of his work, each person raised his
glass and looked towards the poet, but the illustrious master turned
towards me and continued, “As to you, Madame——”
Just at this moment Paul de St. Victor put his glass down so violently
on the table that it broke. There was an instant of stupor, and then I
leaned across the table and held my glass out towards Paul de St.
Victor.
[Illustration:
SARAH BERNHARDT AT A FANCY-DRESS BALL
BY WALTER SPINDLER
]
“Take mine, Monsieur,” I said, “and then when you drink you will know
what my thoughts are in reply to yours, which you have just expressed so
clearly!”
The horrid man took my glass, but with what a look!
Victor Hugo finished his speech in the midst of applause and cheers.
Duquesnel then leaned back and spoke to me quietly. He asked me to tell
Chilly to reply to Victor Hugo. I did as requested. But he gazed at me
with a glassy look, and in a far-away voice replied:
“Some one is holding my legs.” I looked at him more attentively, whilst
Duquesnel asked for silence for M. de Chilly’s speech. I saw that his
fingers were grasping a fork desperately; the tips of his fingers were
white, the rest of the hand was violet. I took his hand, and it was icy
cold; the other was hanging down inert under the table. There was
silence, and all eyes turned towards Chilly.
“Get up,” I said, seized with terror. He made a movement, and his head
suddenly fell forward with his face on his plate. There was a muffled
uproar, and the few women present surrounded the poor man. Stupid,
commonplace, indifferent things were uttered in the same way that one
mutters familiar prayers. His son was sent for, and then two of the
waiters came and carried the body away, living but inert, and placed it
in a small drawing-room.
Duquesnel stayed with him, begging me, however, to go back to the poet’s
guests. I returned to the room where the supper had taken place. Groups
had been formed, and when I was seen entering I was asked if he was
still as ill.
“The doctor has just arrived, and he cannot yet say,” I replied.
“It is indigestion,” said Lafontaine (Ruy Blas), tossing off a glass of
liqueur brandy.
“It is cerebral anæmia,” pronounced Talien (Don Guritan), clumsily, for
he was always losing his memory.
Victor Hugo approached and said very simply:
“It is a beautiful kind of death.”
He then took my arm and led me away to the other end of the room, trying
to chase my thoughts away by gallant and poetical whispers. Some little
time passed with this gloom weighing on us, and then Duquesnel appeared.
He was pale, but appeared as if nothing serious was the matter. He was
ready to answer all questions.
Oh yes; he had just been taken home. It would be nothing, it appeared.
He only needed rest for a couple of days. Probably his feet had been
cold during the meal.
“Yes,” put in one of the _Ruy Blas_ guests, “there certainly was a fine
draught under the table.”
“Yes,” Duquesnel was just replying to some one who was worrying him,
“yes; no doubt there was too much heat for his head.”
“Yes,” added another of the guests, “our heads were nearly on fire with
that wretched gas.”
I could see the moment arriving when Victor Hugo would be reproached by
all of his guests for the cold, the heat, the food, and the wine of his
banquet. All these imbecile remarks got on Duquesnel’s nerves. He
shrugged his shoulders, and drawing me away from the crowd, said:
“It’s all over with him.”
I had had the presentiment of this, but the certitude of it now caused
me intense grief.
“I want to go,” I said to Duquesnel. “Kindly tell some one to ask for my
carriage.”
I moved towards the small drawing-room which served as a cloak-room for
our wraps, and there old Madame Lambquin knocked up against me. Slightly
intoxicated by the heat and the wine, she was waltzing with Talien.
“Ah, I beg your pardon, little Madonna,” she said; “I nearly knocked you
over.”
I pulled her towards me, and without reflecting whispered to her, “Don’t
dance any more, Mamma Lambquin; Chilly is dying.” She was purple, but
her face turned as white as chalk. Her teeth began to chatter, but she
did not utter a word.
“Oh, my dear Lambquin,” I murmured; “I did not know I should make you so
wretched.”
She was not listening to me, though, any longer; she was putting on her
cloak.
“Are you leaving?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Will you drive me home? I will then tell you——”
She wrapped a black fichu round her head, and we both went downstairs,
accompanied by Duquesnel and Paul Meurice, who saw us into the carriage.
She lived in the St. Germain quarter and I in the Rue de Rome. On the
way the poor woman told me the following story.
“You know, my dear,” she began, “I have a mania for somnambulists and
fortune-tellers of all kinds. Well, last Friday (you see, I only consult
them on a Friday) a woman who tells fortunes by cards said to me, ‘You
will die a week after a man who is dark and not young, and whose life is
connected with yours.’ Well, my dear, I thought she was just making game
of me, for there is no man whose life is connected with mine, as I am a
widow and have never had any _liaison_. I therefore abused her for this,
as I pay her seven francs. She charges ten francs to other people, but
seven francs to artistes. She was furious at my not believing her, and
she seized my hands and said, ‘It’s no good yelling at me, for it is as
I say. And if you want me to tell you the exact truth, it is a man who
supports you; and, even to be more exact still, there are two men who
support you, the one dark and the other fair; it’s a nice thing that!’
She had not finished her speech before I had given her such a slap as
she had never had in her life, I can assure you. Afterwards, though, I
puzzled my head to find out what the wretched woman could have meant.
And all I could find was that the two men who support me, the one dark
and the other fair, are our two managers, Chilly and Duquesnel. And now
you tell me that Chilly——”
She stopped short, breathless with her story, and again seized with
terror. “I feel stifled,” she murmured, and in spite of the freezing
cold we lowered both the windows. On arriving I helped her up her four
flights of stairs, and after telling the _concierge_ to look after her,
and giving the woman a twenty-franc piece to make sure that she would do
so, I went home myself, very much upset by all these incidents, as
dramatic as they were unexpected, in the middle of a _fête_.
Three days later Chilly died, without ever recovering consciousness.
Twelve days later poor Lambquin died. To the priest who gave her
absolution she said, “I am dying because I listened to and believed the
demon.”
XXII
AT THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE AGAIN—SCULPTURE
I left the Odéon with very great regret, for I adored and still adore
that theatre. It always seems as though in itself it were a little
provincial town. Its hospitable arcades, under which so many poor old
_savants_ take fresh air and shelter themselves from the sun; the large
flagstones all round, between the crevices of which microscopic yellow
grass grows; its tall pillars, blackened by time, by hands, and by the
dirt from the road; the uninterrupted noise going on all around, the
departure of the omnibuses, like the departure of the old coaches, the
fraternity of the people who meet there; everything, even to the very
railings of the Luxembourg, gives it a quite special aspect in the midst
of Paris. Then too there is a kind of odour of the colleges there—the
very walls are impregnated with youthful hopes. People are not always
talking there of yesterday, as they do in the other theatres. The young
artistes who come there talk of to-morrow.
In short, my mind never goes back to those few years of my life without
a childish emotion, without thinking of laughter and without a dilation
of the nostrils, inhaling again the odour of little ordinary bouquets,
clumsily tied up, bouquets which had all the freshness of flowers that
grow in the open air, flowers that were the offerings of the hearts of
twenty summers, little bouquets paid for out of the purses of students.
I would not take anything away with me from the Odéon. I left the
furniture of my dressing-room to a young artiste. I left my costumes,
all the little toilette knick-knacks—I divided them and gave them away.
I felt that my life of hopes and dreams was to cease there. I felt that
the ground was now ready for the fruition of all the dreams, but that
the struggle with life was about to commence, and I divined rightly.
[Illustration:
SARAH BERNHARDT AT WORK
ON HER _MÉDÉE_
]
My first experience at the Comédie Française had not been a success. I
knew that I was going into the lions’ den. I counted few friends in this
house, except Laroche, Coquelin, and Mounet-Sully—the first two my
friends of the Conservatoire and the latter of the Odéon. Among the
women, Marie Lloyd and Sophie Croizette, both friends of my childhood;
the disagreeable Jouassain, who was nice only to me; and the adorable
Marie Brohan, whose kindness delighted the soul, whose wit charmed the
mind, and whose indifference rebuffed devotion.
M. Perrin decided that I should make my _début_ in _Mademoiselle de
Belle-Isle_, according to Sarcey’s wish.
The rehearsals began in the _foyer_, which troubled me very much. Mile.
Brohan was to play the part of the Marquise de Prie. At this time she
was so fat as to be almost unsightly, while I was so thin that the
composers of popular and comic verses took my meagre proportions as
their theme and the cartoonists as a subject for their albums.
It was therefore impossible for the Duc de Richelieu to mistake the
Marquise de Prie (Madeleine Brohan) for Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle
(Sarah Bernhardt) in the irreverent nocturnal rendezvous given by the
Marquise to the Duc, who thinks he embraces the chaste Mademoiselle de
Belle-Isle.
At each rehearsal Bressant, who took the part of the Duc de Richelieu,
would stop, saying, “No, it is too ridiculous. I must play the Duc de
Richelieu with both my arms cut off!” And Madeleine left the rehearsal
to go to the director’s room in order to try and get rid of the _rôle_.
This was exactly what Perrin wanted; he had from the earliest moment
thought of Croizette, but he wanted to have his hand forced for private
and underhand reasons which he knew and which others guessed.
At last the change took place, and the serious rehearsals commenced.
Then the first performance was announced for November 6 (1872).
I have always suffered, and still suffer, terribly from stage fright,
especially when I know that much is expected of me. I knew a long time
beforehand that every seat in the house had been booked; I knew that the
Press expected a great success, and that Perrin himself was reckoning on
a long series of big receipts.
Alas! all these hopes and predictions went for nothing, and my _re-
début_ at the Comédie Française was only moderately successful.