My Double Life: The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt Part 25

Twelve days later I returned, taking with me a letter covered with the signatures of the householders and tradesmen residing near the Odeon.

On entering the Prefect's room I was petrified to see him, instead of advancing to meet me, rush towards a cupboard, open the door, and fling something hastily into it. After this he leaned against the door as though to prevent my opening it.

"Excuse me," he said, in a witty, mocking tone, "but I caught a violent cold after your first visit. I have just put my overcoat--oh, only an ugly old overcoat, not a warm one," he added quickly, "but still an overcoat--inside there, and there it now is, and I will take the key out of the lock."

He put the key carefully into his pocket, and then came forward and offered me a chair. But our conversation soon took a more serious turn, for the news was very bad. For the last twelve days the ambulances had been crowded with wounded men. Everything was in a bad way, home politics as well as foreign politics. The Germans were advancing on Paris. The army of the Loire was being formed. Gambetta, Chanzy, Bourbaki, and Trochu were organising a desperate defence. We talked for some time about all these sad things, and I told him about the painful impression I had had on my last visit to the Tuileries, of my remembrance of every one, so brilliant, so considerate, and so happy formerly, and so deeply to be pitied at present. We were silent for a moment, and then I shook hands with him, told him I had received all he had sent, and returned to my ambulance.

The Prefect had sent me ten barrels of wine and two of brandy; 30,000 eggs, all packed in boxes with lime and bran; a hundred bags of coffee and boxes of tea, forty boxes of Albert biscuits, a thousand tins of preserves, and a quant.i.ty of other things.

M. Menier, the great chocolate manufacturer, had sent me five hundred pounds of chocolate. One of my friends, a flour dealer, had made me a present of twenty sacks of flour, ten of which were maize flour. This flour-dealer was the one who had asked me to be his wife when I was at the Conservatoire. Felix Potin, my neighbour when I was living at 11 Boulevard Malesherbes, had responded to my appeal by sending two barrels of raisins, a hundred boxes of sardines, three sacks of rice, two sacks of lentils, and twenty sugar-loaves. From M. de Rothschild I had received two barrels of brandy and a hundred bottles of his own wine for the convalescents. I also received a very unexpected present. Leonie Dubourg, an old school-fellow of mine at the Grand-Champs convent, sent me fifty tin boxes each containing four pounds of salt b.u.t.ter. She had married a very wealthy gentleman farmer, who cultivated his own farms, which it seems were very numerous. I was very much touched at her remembering me, for I had never seen her since the old days at the convent. I had also asked for all the overcoats and slippers of my various friends, and I had bought up a job lot of two hundred flannel vests. My Aunt Betsy, my blind grandmother's sister, who is still living in Holland, and is now ninety-three years of age, managed to get for me, through the charming Amba.s.sador for the Netherlands, three hundred night-s.h.i.+rts of magnificent Dutch linen, and a hundred pairs of sheets.

I received lint and bandages from every corner of Paris, but it was more particularly from the Palais de l'Industrie that I used to get my provisions of lint and of linen for binding wounds. There was an adorable woman there, named Mlle. Hocquigny, who was at the head of all the ambulances. All that she did was done with a cheerful gracefulness, and all that she was obliged to refuse she refused sorrowfully, but still in a gracious manner. She was at that time over thirty years of age, and although unmarried she looked more like a very young married woman. She had large, blue, dreamy eyes, and a laughing mouth, a deliciously oval face, little dimples, and, crowning all this grace, this dreamy expression, and this coquettish, inviting mouth, a wide forehead like that of the Virgins painted by the early painters, rather prominent, encircled by hair worn in smooth, wide, flat bandeaux, separated by a faultless parting. The forehead seemed like the protecting rampart of this delicious face. Mlle. Hocquigny was adored and made much of by every one, but she remained invulnerable to all homage. She was happy in being beloved, but she would not allow any one to express affection for her.

At the Palais de l'Industrie a remarkable number of celebrated doctors and surgeons were on duty, and they, as well as the convalescents, were all more or less in love with Mlle. Hocquigny. As she and I were great friends, she confided to me her observations and her sorrowful disdain.

Thanks to her, I was never short of linen nor of lint. I had organised my ambulance with a very small staff. My cook was installed in the public _foyer_. I had bought her an immense cooking range, so that she could make soups and herb-tea for fifty men. Her husband was chief attendant. I had given him two a.s.sistants, and Madame Guerard, Madame Lambquin, and I were the nurses. Two of us sat up at night, so that we each went to bed one night in three. I preferred this to taking on some woman whom I did not know. Madame Lambquin belonged to the Odeon, where she used to take the part of the duennas. She was plain and had a common face, but she was very talented. She talked loud and was very plain-spoken. She called a spade a spade, and liked frankness and no under meaning to things. At times she was a trifle embarra.s.sing with the crudeness of her words and her remarks, but she was kind, active, alert, and devoted. My various friends who were on service at the fortifications came to me in their free time to do my secretarial work.

I had to keep a book, which was shown every day to a sergeant who came from the Val-de-Grace military hospital, giving all details as to how many men came into our ambulance, how many died, and how many recovered and left. Paris was in a state of siege; no one could go far outside the walls, and no news from outside could be received. The Germans were not, however, round the gates of the city. Baron Larrey came now and then to see me, and I had as head surgeon Dr. d.u.c.h.esne, who gave up his whole time, night and day, to the care of my poor men during the five months that this truly frightful nightmare lasted.

I cannot recall those terrible days without the deepest emotion. It was no longer the country in danger that kept my nerves strung up, but the sufferings of all her children. There were all those who were away fighting, those who were brought in to us wounded or dying; the n.o.ble women of the people, who stood for hours and hours in the _queue_ to get the necessary dole of bread, meat, and milk for their poor little ones at home. Ah, those poor women! I could see them from the theatre windows, pressing up close to each other, blue with cold, and stamping their feet on the ground to keep them from freezing--for that winter was the most cruel one we had had for twenty years. Frequently one of these poor, silent heroines was brought in to me, either in a swoon from fatigue or struck down suddenly with congestion caused by cold. On December 20 three of these unfortunate women were brought into the ambulance. One of them had her feet frozen, and she lost the big toe of her right foot. The second was an enormously stout woman, who was suckling her child, and her poor b.r.e.a.s.t.s were harder than wood. She simply howled with pain. The youngest of the three was a girl of sixteen to eighteen years of age. She died of cold, on the trestle on which I had had her placed to send her home. On December 24, there were fifteen degrees of cold. I often sent Guillaume, our attendant, out with a little brandy to warm the poor women. Oh! the suffering they must have endured--those heart-broken mothers, those sisters and _fiancees_--in their terrible dread. How excusable their rebellion seems during the Commune, and even their bloodthirsty madness!

My ambulance was full. I had sixty beds, and was obliged to improvise ten more. The soldiers were installed in the green-room and in the general _foyer_, and the officers in a room which had been formerly the refreshment-room of the theatre.

One day a young Breton, named Marie Le Gallec, was brought in. He had been struck by a bullet in the chest and another in the wrist. Dr.

d.u.c.h.esne bound up his chest firmly, and attended to his wrist. He then said to me very simply:

"Let him have anything he likes--he is dying."

I bent over his bed, and said to him:

"Tell me what would give you pleasure, Marie Le Gallec."

"Soup," he answered promptly, in the most comic way.

Madame Guerard hurried away to the kitchen, and soon returned with a bowl of broth and pieces of toast. I placed the bowl on the little four-legged wooden shelf, which was so convenient for the meals of our poor sufferers. The wounded man looked up at me and said, "Barra." I did not understand, and he repeated, "Barra." His poor chest caused him to hiss out the word, and he made the greatest efforts to repeat his emphatic request.

I sent immediately to the Marine Office, thinking that there would surely be some Breton seamen there, and I explained my difficulty and my ignorance of the Breton dialect.

I was informed that the word "barra" meant bread. I hurried at once to Le Gallec with a large piece of bread. His face lighted up, and taking it from me with his sound hand, he broke it up with his teeth and let the pieces fall in the bowl. He then plunged his spoon into the middle of the broth, and filled it up with bread until the spoon could stand upright in it. When it stood up without shaking about, the young soldier smiled. He was just preparing to eat this horrible concoction when the young priest from St. Sulpice who had my ambulance in charge arrived. I had sent for him on hearing the doctor's sad verdict. He laid his hand gently on the young man's shoulder, thus stopping the movement of his arm. The poor fellow looked up at the priest, who showed him the holy cup.

"Oh," he said simply, and then, placing his coa.r.s.e handkerchief over the steaming soup, he put his hands together.

We had arranged the two screens which we used for isolating the dead or dying around his bed. He was left alone with the priest whilst I went on my rounds to calm those who were chaffing, or help the believers raise themselves for prayer. The young priest soon pushed aside the part.i.tion, and I then saw Marie Le Gallec, with a beaming face, eating his abominable bread sop. He soon fell asleep but awoke before long and asked for something to drink, and then died in a slight fit of choking.

Fortunately I did not lose many men out of the three hundred who came into my ambulance, for the death of the unfortunate ones completely upset me.

I was very young at that time, only twenty-four years of age, but I could nevertheless see the cowardice of some of the men and the heroism of many of the others. A young Savoyard, eighteen years old, had had his forefinger shot off. Baron Larrey was quite sure that he had done it himself with his own gun, but I could not believe that. I noticed, though, that, in spite of our nursing and care, the wound did not heal.

I bound it up in a different way, and the following day I saw that the bandage had been altered. I mentioned this to Madame Lambquin, who was sitting up that night with Madame Guerard.

"Good; I will keep my eye on him. You go to sleep, my child, and rely on me."

The next day when I arrived she told me that she had caught the young man sc.r.a.ping the wound on his finger with his knife. I called him, and told him that I should have to report this to the Val-de-Grace Hospital.

He began to weep, and vowed to me that he would never do it again, and five days later he was well. I signed the paper authorising him to leave the ambulance, and he was sent to the army of the defence. I often wondered what became of him. Another of our patients bewildered us too.

Each time that his wound seemed to be just on the point of healing up, he had a violent attack of dysentery, which prevented him getting well.

This seemed suspicious to Dr. d.u.c.h.esne, and he asked me to watch the man. At the end of a considerable time we were convinced that our wounded man had thought out the most comical scheme.

He slept next the wall, and therefore had no neighbour on the one side.

During the night he managed to file the bra.s.s of his bedstead. He put the filings in a little pot which had been used for ointment of some kind. A few drops of water and some salt mixed with this powdered bra.s.s formed a poison which might have cost its inventor his life. I was furious at this stratagem. I wrote to the Val-de-Grace, and an ambulance conveyance was sent to take this unpatriotic Frenchman away.

But side by side with these despicable men what heroism we saw! A young captain was brought in one day. He was a tall fellow, a regular Hercules, with a superb head and a frank expression. On my book he was inscribed as Captain Menesson. He had been struck by a bullet at the top of the arm, just at the shoulder. With a nurse's a.s.sistance I was trying as gently as possible to take off his cloak, when three bullets fell from the hood which he had pulled over his head, and I counted sixteen bullet holes in the cloak. The young officer had stood upright for three hours, serving as a target himself, whilst covering the retreat of his men as they fired all the time on the enemy. This had taken place among the Champigny vines. He had been brought in unconscious, in an ambulance conveyance. He had lost a great deal of blood, and was half dead with fatigue and weakness. He was very gentle and charming, and thought himself sufficiently well two days later to return to the fight. The doctor, however, would not allow this, and his sister, who was a nun, besought him to wait until he was something like well again.

"Oh, not quite well," she said, smiling, "but just well enough to have strength to fight."

Soon after he came into the ambulance the Cross of the Legion of Honour was brought to him, and this was a moment of intense emotion for every one. The unfortunate wounded men who could not move turned their suffering faces towards him, and, with their eyes s.h.i.+ning through a mist of tears, gave him a fraternal look. The stronger amongst them held out their hands to the young giant.

It was Christmas-eve, and I had decorated the ambulance with festoons of green leaves. I had made pretty little chapels in front of the Virgin Mary, and the young priest from St. Sulpice came to take part in our poor but poetical Christmas service. He repeated some beautiful prayers, and the wounded men, many of whom were from Brittany, sang some sad solemn songs full of charm.

Porel, the present manager of the Vaudeville Theatre, had been wounded on the Avron Plateau. He was then convalescent and was one of my patients, together with two officers now ready to leave the ambulance.

That Christmas supper is one of my most charming and at the same time most melancholy memories. It was served in the small room which we had made into a bedroom. Our three beds were covered with draperies and skins which I had had brought from home, and we used them as seats.

Mlle. Hocquigny had sent me five metres of _boudin blanc_ ("white-pudding"), the famous Christmas dish, and all my poor soldiers who were well enough were delighted with this delicacy. One of my friends had had twenty large _brioche_ cakes made for me, and I had ordered some large bowls of punch, the coloured flames from which amused the grown-up sick children immensely. The young priest from St. Sulpice accepted a piece of _brioche_, and after taking a little white wine left us. Ah, how charming and good he was, that poor young priest! And how well he managed to make Fortin, the insupportable wounded fellow, cease talking. Gradually the latter began to get humanised, until finally he began to think the priest was a good sort of fellow. Poor young priest!

He was shot by the Communists. I cried for days and days over the murder of this young St. Sulpice priest.

XVII

PARIS BOMBARDED

The month of January arrived. The army of the enemy held Paris day by day in a still closer grip. Food was getting scarce. Bitter cold enveloped the city, and poor soldiers who fell, sometimes only slightly wounded, pa.s.sed away gently in a sleep that was eternal, their brain numbed and their body half frozen.

No more news could be received from outside, but thanks to the United States Minister, who had resolved to remain in Paris, a letter arrived from time to time. It was in this way that I received a thin slip of paper, as soft as a primrose petal, bringing me the following message: "Every one well. Courage. A thousand kisses.--Your mother." This impalpable missive dated from seventeen days previously.

And so my mother, my sisters, and my little boy were at The Hague all this time, and my mind, which had been continually travelling in their direction, had been wandering along the wrong route, towards Havre, where I thought they were settled down quietly at the house of a cousin of my father's mother.

Where were they, and with whom?

I had two aunts at The Hague, but the question was, were they there? I no longer knew what to think, and from that moment I never ceased suffering the most anxious and torturing mental distress.

I was doing all in my power just then to procure some wood for fires.

Comte de Keratry had sent me a large provision before his departure to the provinces in a balloon on October 9. My stock was growing very short, and I would not allow what we had in the cellars to be touched, so that in case of an emergency we should not be absolutely without any.

I had all the little footstools belonging to the theatre used for firewood, all the wooden cases in which the properties were kept, a good number of old Roman benches, arm-chairs and curule chairs, that were stowed away under the theatre, and indeed everything which came to hand.

Finally, taking pity on my despair, pretty Mlle. Hocquigny sent me ten thousand kilograms of wood, and then I took courage again.

I had been told about some new system of keeping meat, by which the meat lost neither its juice nor its nutritive quality. I sent Madame Guerard to the _Mairie_ in the neighbourhood of the Odeon, where such provisions were distributed, but some brute answered her that when I had removed all the religious images from my ambulance I should receive the necessary food. M. Herisson, the mayor, with some functionary holding an influential post, had been to inspect my ambulance. The important personage had requested me to have the beautiful white Virgins which were on the mantel-pieces and tables taken away, as well as the Divine Crucified--one hanging on the wall of each room in which there were any of the wounded. I refused in a somewhat insolent and very decided way to act in accordance with the wish of my visitor, whereupon the famous Republican turned his back on me and gave orders that I should be refused everything at the _Mairie_. I was very determined, however, and I moved heaven and earth until I succeeded in getting inscribed on the lists for distribution of food, in spite of the orders of the chief. It is only fair to say that the mayor was a charming man. Madame Guerard returned, after her third visit, with a child pus.h.i.+ng a hand-barrow containing ten enormous bottles of the miraculous meat. I received the precious consignment with infinite joy, for my men had been almost without meat for the last three days, and the beloved _pot-au-feu_ was an almost necessary resource for the poor wounded fellows. On all the bottles were directions as to opening them: "Let the meat soak so many hours," &c. &c.

Madame Lambquin, Madame Guerard, and I, together with all the staff of the infirmary, were soon grouped anxiously and inquisitively around these gla.s.s receptacles.

I told the head attendant to open the largest of the bottles, in which through the thick gla.s.s we could see an enormous piece of beef surrounded by thick, muddled-looking water. The string fastened round the rough paper which hid the cork was cut, and then, just as the man was about to put the corkscrew in, a deafening explosion was heard and a rank odour filled the room. Every one rushed away terrified. I called them all back, scared and disgusted as they were, and showed them the following words on the directions: "Do not be alarmed at the bad odour on opening the bottle." Courageously and with resignation we resumed our work, though we felt sick all the time from the abominable exhalation. I took the beef out and placed it on a dish that had been brought for the purpose. Five minutes later this meat turned blue and then black, and the stench from it was so unbearable that I decided to throw it away.

Madame Lambquin was wiser, though, and more reasonable.