My Double Life: The Memoirs of Sarah BernhardtBernhardt, Sarah
General
My Double Life: The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt
Bernhardt, Sarah
Actors -- France -- Biography; Bernhardt, Sarah, 1844-1923
I visited nearly the whole of Brittany, but made my chief stay at
Finistère. The Pointe du Raz enchanted me. I remained twelve days at
Audierne, in the house of Father Batifoulé, who was so big and so fat
that they had been obliged to cut a piece out of the table to let in his
immense abdomen. I set out every morning at ten o’clock. My steward
Claude himself prepared my lunch, which he packed up very carefully in
three little baskets, then climbing into the comical vehicle of Father
Batifoulé, my little boy driving, we set out for the Baie des Trépassés.
Ah, that beautiful and mysterious shore, all bristling with rocks! The
lighthouse keeper would be looking out for me, and would come to meet
me. Claude gave him my provisions, with a thousand recommendations as to
the manner of cooking the eggs, warming up the lentils, and toasting the
bread. He carried off everything, then returned with two old sticks in
which he had stuck nails to make them into picks, and we commenced the
terrifying ascent of the Pointe du Raz, a kind of labyrinth full of
disagreeable surprises, of crevasses across which we had to jump over
the gaping and roaring abyss, of arches and tunnels through which we had
to crawl on all fours, having overhead—touching us even—a rock which had
fallen there in unknown ages and was only held in equilibrium by some
inexplicable cause. Then all at once the path became so narrow that it
was impossible to walk straight forward; we had to turn and put our
backs against the cliff and advance with both arms spread out and
fingers holding on to the few asperities of the rock.
When I think of what I did in those moments, I tremble, for I have
always been, and still am, subject to dizziness; and I went over this
path along a steep precipitous rock, 30 metres high, in the midst of the
infernal noise of the sea, at this place eternally furious, and which
raged fearfully against this indestructible cliff. And I must have taken
a mad pleasure in it, for I accomplished this journey five times in
eleven days.
After this challenge thrown down to reason we descended, and installed
ourselves in the Baie des Trépassés. After a bath we had lunch, and I
painted till sunset.
The first day there was nobody there. The second day a child came to
look at us. The third day about ten children stood around asking for
sous. I was foolish enough to give them some, and the following day
there were twenty or thirty boys, some of them from sixteen to eighteen
years old. Seeing near my easel something not particularly agreeable, I
begged one of them to take it away and throw it into the sea, and for
that I gave, I think, fifty centimes. When I came back the following day
to finish my painting the whole population of the neighbouring village
had chosen this place to relieve their corporal necessities, and as soon
as I arrived the same boys, but in increased numbers, offered, if
properly paid, to take away what they had put there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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