Though with wonderful success she has been busily pursuing that object from that day to this, the beginnings of her career were not promising. Her début (1862) in Racine’s _Iphigénie_ created no particular comment. She remembers, however, that on that occasion, when she lifted her long and extraordinarily thin arms, for the sacrifice, the audience laughed.[13] Other parts fell to her, but she did not long remain at the House of Molière. As other managers were later to learn, Sarah cared little for agreements and contracts. The occasion of her first desertion of the _Comédie_ was trivial enough. Here at the great national theatre she expected to remain always, but one day her sister trod on the gown of Mme. Nathalie, another actress of the company, “old, spiteful and surly,” who in petty anger shoved the girl aside. Sarah promptly responded by boxing the ears of her elder colleague. Neither would apologize, and the quickly achieved result was that the younger actress retired. She remained away from the _Comédie Française_ for ten years, and it was during this time that she laid the foundation of her fame. Brief engagements at the _Gymnase_[14] and the _Porte St. Martin_ were followed by an opportunity to join the company at the _Odéon_. MM. Chilly and Duquesnel were the managers. The latter was young, kind to Sarah, and discerning of her talents. As for Chilly, he was less enthusiastic: “M. Duquesnel is responsible for you. I should not upon any account have engaged you.” “And if you had been alone, monsieur,” she answered, “I should not have signed, so we are quits.” Mlle. Bernhardt’s career--once she had launched herself upon it--divides naturally into three periods: the six years (1866–1872) at the _Odéon_, the playhouse of the Latin Quarter, “the theatre,” she says, “that I have loved most”; another term (1872–1880) at the _Française_; and her long career since, during which she has been her own mistress, accepting engagements where it pleased her, managing theatres of her own, and traveling over all the world. Her first taste of success came when she played Zacharie in _Athalie_, soon after she went to the _Odéon_. It fell to her to recite the choruses, and the “_voix d’or_” won its first triumph. She was now twenty-two. For four years, with plentiful interludes of temper and temperament, she had been striving for success. Now, at the _Odéon_, she worked and worked hard. “I was always ready to take any one’s place at a moment’s notice, for I knew all the rôles.” Chilly, who at first could see only her thinness[15] and not her ability, was brought round to Duquesnel’s view of her. “I used to think,” she says again, “of my few months at the _Comédie Française_. The little world I had known there had been stiff, scandal-mongering, and jealous. At the _Odéon_ I was very happy. We thought of nothing but putting on plays, and we rehearsed morning, afternoon, and at all hours, and I liked that very much.”[16]