It was a singularly unfortunate idea, he wrote, to let Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt appear in this important part of Léonora, still alive with the fire breathed into it by Mlle. Fargueil. All the most essential elements in the character--conquering charm, sovereign pride, haughty and cutting wit, light and stinging insolence, pretended pathos and false love--are wanting in her nature. She displays nothing but a subdued plaintiveness, and when she tries to intensify her tone she merely strikes a jarring note. She seeks to be imperious, and is merely violent; her disdain is without hauteur and her allurements are vulgar. It is a singular delusion to suppose that she will be able to fill and sustain a great _rôle_. All the efforts that are made and will be made to push her to the front will only display her inadequacy. Some envious rivals inspired newspaper attacks on her on the ground of her nationality. She was represented as a German Jewess. “Certainly,” she replied, “I am a Jewess, but not a German,” and she wrote as follows to M. Jouvin-- I should be really very much obliged if you would include in your next _feuilleton_ a few words to correct the mistake you made in your article on the revival of _Dalila_ at the Comédie Française. Since that day I have received a perfect avalanche of insulting and threatening letters. Nothing less than this could have induced me to write to you. I am French, absolutely French. I proved it during the siege of Paris, and the Society for the Encouragement of Well-doing awarded me a medal. Would it have done so if I had been a German? All my family come from Holland. Amsterdam was the birthplace of my humble ancestors. If I have a foreign accent--which I much regret--it is cosmopolitan, but not Teutonic. I am a daughter of the great Jewish race, and my somewhat uncultivated language is the outcome of our enforced wanderings. I hope your sense of justice will lead you to rectify a mistake which may not only affect my son’s future but is painful to me as a Frenchwoman. I thank you in advance, and am, etc., SARAH BERNHARDT. On the 4th June, 1873, she created Mrs. Douglas in _L’Absent_, by Eugène Manuel, and Marthe in _Chez L’Avocat_, a one-act piece by Paul Ferrier. The parts were insignificant, and brought her no increase of fame. The Press ignored them, almost entirely. She took no holiday during the summer of this year. During August she re-appeared in _Andromaque_, and the _Temps_ became kind to her again-- Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt was tender, bewitching, coquettish, and above all feminine. Her performance was like an air, sad and passionate by turns, played by a master hand on a violoncello.