At the _Odéon_ Sarah soon became the favorite of the students of the _Quartier_. Rather to the disgust of the older patrons of the house, the students were indiscriminate in their appreciation of the young actress, and applauded her indifferent work equally with her successes. For successes she now began to have. With difficulty M. Chilly was induced to consent to the production of Coppée’s one-act play _Le Passant_. But so successful was it that it not only ran for a hundred nights, but Bernhardt and the beautiful Mlle. Agar played it for Napoleon and Eugénie at the Tuileries. In _Kean_, by Dumas, she was, by all accounts, admirable.[17] George Sand came to the _Odéon_ for the rehearsals of her play _L’Autre_. Of her Bernhardt says: “Mme. George Sand was a sweet charming creature, extremely timid. She did not talk much but smoked all the time.” In the midst of her term at the _Odéon_ came an astonishing episode in Bernhardt’s career--her activities during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. The theatres were of course closed, but it was not in her nature to sit still and do nothing. Therefore she sent her young son[18] out of the city, and in the fall of 1870, after her own severe illness, proceeded to establish an army hospital in the foyers of the _Odéon_, with herself as its working head. With an executive ability and a zeal characteristic but none the less remarkable, she not only organized its commissariat, and kept all the records and accounts, but herself acted as one of the nurses. The section of her autobiography that deals with the siege of Paris and with her journey through the enemy’s country to Hombourg and back that she might bring home her family, will afford some future historian a graphic impression of one of the saddest days in the history of Paris. When the _Odéon_ reopened, in the fall of 1871, Sarcey, the great critic, said of Sarah, who played (in _Jean-Marie_) a young Breton girl: “No one could be more innocently poetic than this young lady. She will become a great _comédienne_, and she is already an admirable artist. Everything she does has a special savor of its own. It is impossible to say whether she is pretty. She is thin, and her expression is sad, but she has queenly grace, charm, and the inexpressible _je ne sais quoi_. She is an artist by nature, and an incomparable one. There is no one like her at the _Comédie Française_.” At the end of 1871 Victor Hugo, who had been practically an exile during the Empire, came back to France. His return, as it proved, meant another turning point in Sarah’s life, for when the _Odéon_ decided to produce his _Ruy Blas_, she was selected, after a good deal of bickering, as the Queen. Hugo she found, despite her strong previous prejudice against him, “charming, so witty and refined, and so gallant.”[19]