Since then I have been delivered over to the monster, bound hand and foot, and I have been and still am accused of adoring advertisement. And to think that my first claims to celebrity were my extraordinary thinness and delicate health. I had scarcely made my _début_ when epigrams, puns, jokes, and caricatures concerning me were indulged in by every one to their heart’s content. Was it really for the sake of advertising myself that I was so thin, so small, so weak; and was it for this, too, that I remained in bed six months of the year, laid low by illness? My name became celebrated before I was myself. [Illustration: SARAH BERNHARDT _From the portrait by Jules Bastien-Lepage_ ] On the first night of Louis Bouilhet’s piece, _Mademoiselle Aïssé_, at the Odéon, Flaubert, who was an intimate friend of the author, introduced an _attaché_ of the British Embassy to me. “Oh, I have known you for some time, Mademoiselle,” he said; “you are the little stick with the sponge on the top.” This caricature of me had just appeared, and had been the delight of idle folks. I was quite a young girl at that time, and nothing of that kind hurt me or troubled me. In the first place, all the doctors had given me up, so that I was indifferent about things; but all the doctors were mistaken, and twenty years later I had to fight against the monster. XXIX THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE RETURNS TO PARIS—SARAH BERNHARDT’S COMMENTS ON ACTORS AND ACTRESSES OF THE DAY The return of the Comédie to its home was an event, but an event that was kept quiet. Our departure from Paris had been very lively and gay, and quite a public function. Our return was clandestine for many of the members, and for me among the number. It was a doleful return for those who had not been appreciated, whilst those who had been failures were furious. I had not been back home an hour when Perrin was announced. He began to reproach me gently about the little care I took of my health. He said I caused too much fuss to be made about me. “But,” I exclaimed, “is it my fault if I am too thin? Is it my fault, too, if my hair is too curly, and if I don’t think just as other people do? Supposing that I took sufficient arsenic during a month to make me swell out like a barrel, and supposing I were to shave my head like an Arab and only answer, ‘Yes’ to everything you said, people would declare I did it for advertisement.” “But, my dear child,” answered Perrin, “there are people who are neither fat nor thin, neither close shaven nor with shocks of hair, and who answer ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’”