Just before a general rehearsal in which she was to have appeared last week, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt was seized with a fainting fit and had to be taken home. Since then she has been hovering between life and death. The official accounts represent her as recovering satisfactorily, but, as a matter of fact, her Rife hangs by a thread. She has long been afflicted with kidney trouble, and it has now reached such a point that she can take searcely any food. At the present moment, she is living on a spconful of jam and some fruit per day. At 78, of course, one cannot as-simulate much nourishment, but even at that age it cannot be brought down to such a fine point as has been reached in this case without serious consequences.
Like all people with the artistic temperament, Sarah is a difficult patient to manage. On the very day of her illness she insisted on seeing two old friends who had called to inquire, and, feeling better a few days later, she got up and played cards, with the result that she has since been compelled to stay in bed. It will be little short of a miracle if she regains anything like health and strength, and a still greater miracle if she ever appears on the stage again, but an indomitable will such as Sarah Bernhardt's can accomplish wonders.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.