I have long felt that this rare artiste is not merely a great actress, but the only one of our time. She stands without a rival in the world. I have never seen Rachel, whose fame still excites Mme. Sarah Bernhardt to greater efforts even in the hour of her greatest triumphs, but I do not see how it can be possible for any one to have more talent than Sarah. Her evening ended in a perfect ovation. [Illustration: As Cleopatra.] She played Cléopâtre until the beginning of January 1891, and on the 23rd she set off for America and Australia, I went to see her a few days before her departure. I had already paid several visits about this time to her delightful sanctum in the Boulevard Pereire. She had been suffering from an affection of the larynx, and was hardly able to speak, and I had called to inquire after her health. To pass away the time while she disposed of her dressmakers, doctors, attorneys, and what not, I strolled up and down the well-known hall on the ground-floor--a hall quite unlike any other that I have ever seen. In the course of my many journalistic visits to the houses of Paris celebrities I have soon become indifferent to the cold and hollow display of official _salons_, to M. Renan’s plain walnut-wood furniture, to M. Zola’s somewhat discordant profusion of decoration, to Edmond de Goncourt’s art-treasures, and to the solemn comfort of academic homes. I have viewed, without faltering, the gorgeous and imposing ceilings of the Hôtel d’Uzès, the pompous display of multi-millionaire financiers, the faintly pretentious coquetry of the popular actress’s home, the frills and furbelows and knock-me-down eccentricities of our celebrated painters; but every time I enter what Sarah Bernhardt calls her studio, I am immediately struck by an indefinable something, infinitely pleasing, and not to be met with elsewhere. No doubt the sensation is partly physical and partly mental; it must arise from a combination of the perfumed atmosphere of the place, the ideally artistic arrangement and extraordinary diversity of everything, the muffled footfalls on the thick carpet, the subdued twittering of birds hidden in the foliage of rare and costly plants, the intoxicating play of colour on silk and velvet, the silent welcome of familiar animals, and above all, the voice and presence of the mistress of the house when she makes her appearance. But she is not yet here, and I resume my investigations. At the first glance it is difficult to see anything more than a delightful chaos of light and colour, an odd but harmonious profusion of the Oriental and the modern. Gradually the eye begins to distinguish surrounding objects. On the walls, which are hung with Turkey-red cotton, with a pattern of graceful plumes, are all sorts of queer weapons, Mexican sombreros, feather parasols, and trophies of lances, daggers, sabres, clubs, quivers and arrows, surmounted by hideous nightmare-like war-masks.