Page:My Double Life — Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt.djvu/271

 afterwards with full force into space. In one second what now is becomes for me what was, and I love it with tender emotion as something dead. But I adore what is to be without seeking even to know about it, for what is to be is the unknown, the mysterious attraction. I always fancy that it will be something unheard of, and I shudder from head to foot in delicious uneasiness. I receive quantities of letters, and it seems to me that I never receive enough. I watch them accumulating just as I watch the waves of the sea. What are they going to bring me, these mysterious envelopes, large, small, pink, blue, yellow, white? What are they going to fling upon the rock, these great wild waves, dark with seaweed? What sailor-boy's corpse? What remains of a wreck? What are these little brisk waves going to leave on the beach, these reflections of a blue sky, little laughing waves? What pink "sea-star"? What mauve anemone? What pearly shell?

So I never open my letters immediately. I look at the envelopes, try to recognise the handwriting and the seal; and it is only when I am quite certain from whom the letter comes that I open it. The others I leave my secretary to open or a kind friend, Suzanne Seylor. My friends know this so well that they always put their initials in the corner of their envelopes.

At that time I had no secretary, but mon petit Dame served me as such.

I looked at the envelope a long time, and gave it at last to Madame Guérard.

"It is a letter from M. Perrin, director of the Comédie Française," she said. "He asks if you can fix a time to see him on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon at the Comédie Française or at your own house."

"Thanks. What day is it to-day?" I asked.

"Monday," she replied.

I then installed Madame Guérard at my desk, and asked her to reply that I would go there the following day at three o'clock.

I was earning very little at that time at the Odéon. I was living on what my father had left me—that is, on the transaction made by the Havre notary—and not much remained. I therefore went to see Duquesnel and showed him the letter.

"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked.