The Celebrated Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, Painted by Jules Bastien-Lepage 352 Mme. Sarah Bernhardt and Members of Her Company Out Shooting 362 Bust of Victorien Sardou by Sarah Bernhardt 366 Sarah Bernhardt in Travelling Costume, 1880 378 Sarah Bernhardt at Home, by Walter Spindler 390 Sarah Bernhardt as _Doña Sol_ in “Hernani” 402 Corner in Sarah Bernhardt’s Paris Home, Showing Painting by Chartran 410 Library in Madame Bernhardt’s House, Paris 420 Corner in Sarah Bernhardt’s Library, Showing Madame Bernhardt’s Writing Table on the Left 426 Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris 436 _Foyer_ in Madame Bernhardt’s Theater, Paris 442 Sarah Bernhardt in “L’Aiglon”—Painting by G. Clairin 450 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE CHAPTER I MY AUNTS My mother was fond of traveling: she would go from Spain to England, from London to Paris, from Paris to Berlin, and from there to Christiania; then she would come back, embrace me, and set out again for Holland, her native country. She used to send my nurse clothing for herself and cakes for me. To one of my aunts she would write: “Look after little Sarah; I shall return in a month’s time.” A month later she would write to another of her sisters: “Go and see the child at her nurse’s; I shall be back in a couple of weeks.” My mother’s age was nineteen; I was three years old, and my two aunts were seventeen and twenty years of age; another aunt was fifteen, and the eldest was twenty-eight, but the latter lived at Martinique, and was the mother of six children. My grandmother was blind, my grandfather dead, and my father had been in China for the last two years. I have no idea why he had gone there. My youthful aunts were always promising to come to see me, but rarely kept their word. My nurse hailed from Brittany and lived near Quimperle in a little white house with a low thatched roof, on which wild gilly-flowers grew. That was the first flower which charmed my eyes as a child, and I have loved it ever since. Its leaves are heavy and sad-looking, and its petals are made of the setting sun. Brittany is a long way off, even in our present epoch of velocity of travel. In those days it was the end of the world. Fortunately, my nurse was, it appears, a good, kind woman, and as her own child had died, she had only me to love. But she loved after the manner of poor people—when she had time.