One day, as her husband was ill, she went into the fields to help gather in potatoes; the over-damp soil was rotting them, and there was no time to be lost. She left me in charge of her husband, who was lying on his Breton bedstead suffering from a bad attack of lumbago. The good woman had placed me in my high chair, and had been careful to put in the wooden peg which supported the narrow tablet for my toys. She threw a fagot in the grate, and said to me in Breton language (until the age of four I only understood Breton), "Be a good girl, Milk Blossom." That was my only name at the time. When she had gone I tried to withdraw the wooden peg which she had taken so much trouble to put in place. Finally I succeeded in pushing aside the little rampart. I wanted to reach the ground, but--poor little me!--I fell into the fire, which was burning joyfully. [Illustration: SARAH BERNHARDT'S HOME IN BRITTANY WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD. _From a Photo._] The screams of my foster-father, who could not move, brought in some neighbours. I was thrown, all smoking, into a large pail of fresh milk. My aunts were informed of what had happened; they communicated the news to my mother, and for the next four days that quiet part of the country was ploughed by stage-coaches, which arrived in rapid succession. My aunts came from all parts of the world; and my mother, in the greatest alarm, hastened from Brussels with Baron Larrey, one of her friends, who was a celebrated doctor, and a surgeon whom Baron Larrey had brought with him. I have been told since that nothing was more painful to witness, and yet so charming, as my mother's despair. The doctor approved of the "mask of butter," which was changed every two hours. Dear Baron Larrey! I often saw him afterwards, and now and again we shall meet him in the pages of my Memoirs. He used to tell me in such charming fashion how those kind folks loved Milk Blossom. And he could never refrain from laughing at the thought of that butter. There was butter everywhere, he used to say; on the bedsteads, on the cupboards, on the chairs, on the tables, hanging up on nails in bladders. All the neighbours used to bring butter to make masks for Milk Blossom.