She returned to Paris, but left again almost immediately. On the 10th September she was at Nantes, and afterwards she appeared at Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyons, and Geneva. She excited wild enthusiasm everywhere. Medals bearing her image and superscription, Sarah Bernhardt bracelets and collars, photographs and biographies were sold in the streets. At Lyons, the Khedive’s son unsuccessfully offered £80 for a stage-box. The Old World soon ceased to afford sufficient scope for her activity. On the 16th October, 1880, she realized a long-cherished desire, and sailed from Havre to America on a tour, under Mr. Abbey’s management. She took with her all her company, her servants, and twenty-eight trunks containing innumerable dresses and particularly one which she was to wear in _La Dame aux Camélias_. This wonderful toilette had cost £480, and fifty work-girls, so the story ran, had toiled for a whole month to embroider the camellias on the mantle. Mr. Abbey had promised the actress a small fortune: £100 for every performance, plus half the receipts above £480. Sarah extended her journey to nearly every part of the States. From the date of her _début_ at New York, on 10th November, she was incessantly on the move. She appeared at Boston, Hartford, Montreal, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, etc. Her _répertoire_ included _Adrienne Lecouvreur_, _Froufrou_, _Hernani_, _Phèdre_, _Le Passant_, and _La Dame aux Camélias_. She became the proprietor of a tame alligator, who soon succumbed to the champagne diet she inflicted on him. At length, on the 16th May, 1881, she landed in triumph at Havre, and was greeted by a cohort of friends from Paris, and by a crowd estimated, somewhat rashly perhaps, by the _Figaro_, at 50,000 persons. She had earned £36,800 in one hundred and sixty-six performances. Out of this sum she handed £4000 over to her agent, Jarrett, and £16,000 to her legal representatives in Paris. Her travelling expenses amounted to about £8000, so that after paying all her debts she was left with a balance of £8800. She brought back from America not only this respectable sum, but something else: the remembrance of great ovations, unprecedented triumphs, and adventures in which she invariably preserved her dignity. One day she happened to enter a Protestant church and heard the minister denounce her as an “imp of darkness, a female demon sent from the modern Babylon to corrupt the New World.” Before the day was over, the clergyman received this note-- MY DEAR CONFRÈRE, Why attack me so violently? Actors ought not to be hard on one another. SARAH BERNHARDT. [Illustration: Mme. Sarah Bernhardt in travelling costume, during her first American tour.]