The hospital, situated in the Ternes quarter of Paris, is a species of small private house with a courtyard in front, and is as little like a medical establishment as can be imagined. The patient’s room, scrupulously neat and clean, was on the first floor, overlooking a small garden containing a few large trees. The great artiste was lying on a small iron bed, her fair hair completely covering her pillow. She was smiling and gay, as usual; perhaps a little paler than her wont, that was all. My mind involuntarily reverted to Lady Macbeth, Doña Sol, Maria de Neubourg, Phèdre, and Froufrou, and I thought of all the triumphs, heroic ardour, wild passion and divine melancholy of thirty years of art and crowded life abruptly cut short and laid low under the surgeon’s knife. But the wonderful vitality of this rare creature, who has always vanquished every combination of adverse circumstances, had once more got the better of misfortune. “I kept on telling myself every day,” she said, “that this is the price I have to pay for the great day I had two years ago. I always said something of this kind was bound to come. Ask Seylor if I didn’t.” Mlle. Seylor, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s faithful companion, who has not been absent from her a day for the last ten years, had just entered the room. “Didn’t I tell you so, Seylor?” the patient continued. “When you kissed me and said how happy you were over my ‘glory,’ as you called it, didn’t I say, ‘Everything has its bad side as well as its good. See if I don’t pay dearly for to-day!’” And a shadow of melancholy came over the great artiste’s features, but soon disappeared. As the song of a bird arose from the garden, she exclaimed-- “Listen to that blackbird; isn’t it delightful? He sings every morning just as if he had been put there on purpose for me.” Speaking of the operation, she said-- “It lasted an hour and a half, but I did not feel the slightest pain either then or afterwards. I have had no fever at all. At the present moment my temperature is not above 97°. For two days the chloroform rather annoyed me, and I had touches of nausea, but that was all. The only pain I had was what I inflicted on my son by running the risk. Poor boy! it’s the first time I have ever made him suffer of my own free will!” My eyes wandered round the room. Apart from a few roses and orchids, there was nothing on the mantelpiece and tables but portraits of Maurice Bernhardt as a child, as a youth, and as he is to-day. There was also a marble bust of him. “Look!” said Sarah, “there are his first shoe and his first shirt.” Hanging from the corner of a mirror were a tiny little white patent-leather shoe, all shrivelled by time, and a shirt that might have fitted a doll. “They never leave me,” she added. “When I travel, I take them with me, and I felt I must have them here. I believe they bring me good luck.” Before taking leave I inquired as to the probable duration of the convalescence.