Memories of My Life: Being My Personal, Professional, and Social Recollections as Woman and ArtistBernhardt, Sarah
General
Memories of My Life: Being My Personal, Professional, and Social Recollections as Woman and Artist
Bernhardt, Sarah
Actors -- Biography; Bernhardt, Sarah, 1844-1923; Women -- Biography
I asked M. Camille Doucet, director of the Beaux-Arts, to allow me to
recite something to him, and, as my mother always refused to accompany
me, Mme. Guérard went with me. My little sister, Régina, begged me to
take her, and very unwisely I consented. We had not been in the
director’s office more than five minutes before my sister, who was only
six years old, began to climb on the furniture. She jumped on a stool,
and finally sat down on the floor, pulling the paper basket, which was
under the desk, toward her, and proceeded to spread all the torn papers
which it contained about the room. On seeing this, Camille Doucet mildly
observed that she was not a very good little girl. My sister, with her
head in the basket, answered in her husky voice:
“If you bother me, monsieur, I shall tell everyone that you are there to
give out holy water that is poison—my aunt says so.”
My face turned purple with shame, and I stammered out:
“Please do not believe that, M. Doucet, my little sister is telling an
untruth.”
Régina sprang to her feet and, clenching her fists, rushed at me like a
little fury:
“Aunt Rosine never said that?” she exclaimed. “You are telling the
untruth ... why, she said it to M. De Morny, and he answered....”
I had forgotten this, and I have forgotten what the Duc de Morny
answered, but, beside myself with anger, I put my hand over my sister’s
mouth and took her quickly away. She howled like a wildcat, and we
rushed like a hurricane through the waiting room which was full of
people. I then gave way to one of those violent fits of temper to which
I had been subject in my childhood. I sprang into the first cab that
passed the door, and, when once in the cab, struck my sister with such
fury that Mme. Guérard was alarmed, and protected her with her own body,
receiving all the blows I gave with my head, arms, and feet, for in my
anger, rage, and shame I flung myself about to right and left. My rage
was all the more profound from the fact that I was very fond of Camille
Doucet. He was gentle and charming, affable and kind-hearted. He had
refused my aunt something she had asked for, and, unaccustomed to being
refused anything, she had a spite against him. This had nothing to do
with me, though, and I wondered what Camille Doucet would think. And
then, too, I had not asked him about the Vaudeville.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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