finest trait, however, she kept right on, and won her way to genuine achievement. As Aricie in _Phèdre_ she made a secondary part notable. Thus Sarcey: “There can be no doubt about it now. All the opposition to Mlle. Bernhardt must yield to facts. She simply delighted the public. The beautiful verses allotted to Aricie were never better delivered. Her voice is genuine music. There was a continuous thrill of pleasure among the entire audience.” That she had thoroughly arrived was soon to be proved and re-proved. Zaïre[21] was followed by Phèdre herself, Berthe in _La Fille de Roland_, Doña Sol in _Hernani_, Monime in _Mithridate_, and revivals of _Ruy Blas_ and _Le Sphinx_, each a personal triumph for the actress who was so rapidly filling the eye of Paris.[22] For Sarah Bernhardt had by now succeeded in making herself, if not a universally acknowledged artist, at least a real Parisian celebrity. It was not a reputation confined to the actress _per se_. Designedly or not, Sarah set the tongues of Paris (and shortly of all Europe) wagging by a continuous exhibition of eccentricity that amounts to a tradition. To mention only what seem to be well authenticated manifestations of her caprice: She kept a pearwood coffin at the foot of her bed, slept in it and learned her parts in it. It is to be the veritable coffin of her last resting place.[23] She kept as a further reminder of her mortality a complete human skeleton in her bedroom. Years before she had a tortoise as a household pet. She named it Chrysogère and had a shell of gold, set with topazes, fitted to its back. Now she was keeping two Russian greyhounds, a poodle, a bulldog, a terrier, a leveret, a monkey, three cats, a parrot, and several other birds. Later she had lions, and an alligator! She made ascents in a captive balloon at the Exhibition and once in a balloon that was _not_ captive.[24] Perrin was outraged by this caprice and tried to fine her for “traveling without leave.” She wrote for the newspapers. She scorned the fashions. She dabbled in painting and sculpture, and, particularly with her chisel, her efforts were, if not noteworthy, at least respectable. Indeed, a group sculpture won an honorable mention in the Salon of 1876, though there were plenty to deny that it was really her work. Her studiolike apartment was the rendezvous of all artistic Paris. In 1879 her poetic, restrained, and generally admirable impersonation of Doña Sol in _Hernani_ brought her general homage. On the night of the one-hundredth performance Victor Hugo presided at a banquet in her honor, and M. Sarcey, in behalf of her “many admiring friends,” presented to her a necklace of diamonds.