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ONS. VICTORIEN SARDOU, the son of a professor in Paris, began life as a medical student, but was forced by want of means to give lessons in mathematics and to write a little for the reviews. His first play was produced at the age at which our first portrait represents him, but proved a complete failure, and three years later he was living, or rather dying, in a garret, miserably poor and struck down by typhoid fever. A neighbour, Mademoiselle de Brécourt, nursed him with tender care, and on his recovery he married her. Then, undeterred by his former failure, he turned again to writing plays, with such phenomenal success that before the age at which he is depicted in our second portrait he was master of a princely fortune and a world-wide reputation. He is best known in England by "Fédora" and "Théodora," which he wrote for Sarah Bernhardt. His reception into the French Academy took place in 1878.