Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-10-14
a SLAVE TO MORPHINE.
The Details of the Horrible Death, of
Bernhardt's Husband.
From the Pail Mall Gazette.


From the Pail Mall Gazette
\ story comes from Paris giving some
sensational details of the death of Jacques
Damala, husband of Sarah Bernhardt.
Damala was slave to the morphine habit,
and during his last season with Sarah in
Egypt went so far as to forge the names of
doctors from Cairo and Alexandria to pre-
scriptiOns made by himself ordering enor-
nous quantities of the soothing poison.
Walters were bribed by him in every hotel
where he lived, and became his accom-
plices in the slow but sure work of his own
destruction.
On their return from Egypt Sarah and
her troupe stopped at Milan. There
Damala could no longer hide his situation
from his friends. One evening when
seated with his wife at a table d'hote he
was seized for the first time with a fit
of delirium tremens in the presence of
more than 100 terrified people. Around
him he saw nothing but rats, who We're, he
! howled, assailing him, running over his
| body and trying to eat up his vitals.
His formerly fine features were then
horrible to behold. Suddenly he imagined
seeing also rats on some of his companions
of travel, rushed upon them, and tore up
hall. No one dared lay hands on him;
but Sarah, although frightened to death,
seized him in her arms, and by dint of
caresses and kind words, brought him
| back at last to his senses.
From that eventful day Sarah had him
closely watched, and as soon as he was
back with her to Paris she summoned
three of the most famous doctors, and asked
| them to prepare mixture exactly similar
| to morphine, but thoroughly innocuous, and
| induced Damald to use it. At first he had
been very suspicious, aud had made a care
| tul analysis of the new potion, as would
have done a thief who would have stolen
counterfeit coin. But he had discovered
nothing, and was thus saved from himself
| for a little while Sarah, all absorbed bv
| the rehearsals of LENA" at the Varieties,
had summarily locked him up in her own
hoU," On the Boulevard Peaeire, denying
him ali kinds OF flashes, potions, packages
and even his street garments, from fear he
would escape and buy the real articles at
some druggists place.
One day, however, he recovered his lib
! erty, bought big doses of morphine and
| had soon fits of furious madness. He was
haunted by the idea that every one around
| him was prosecuting him. lie imagined
| seeing one of his friends spying him from
| the rails of the Suburban Railroad, which
was running under his windows. He
thought he saw Jeanne, the sister of Sarah,
coming down, with the help of sheet,
from the story above to peer at him
| through his window while he was inject
ing morphine under his skin. He heard
an army OF spies shouting to him: "Mor-
phine! Morphinew firm under every
| board of the floor in his room. And, armed
with loaded pistol, he would search the
whole house, shouting and howling:
"See here the miserable wretchesl They
don't fall The train won't crush theml
They are bullet proof! All, les Canailles p'
When he was dead, at the end of one of
those frightful scenes, there was not to be
found on his dilapidated body single
place which had not been stung by one of
the twenty three Pravaz syringes he had
used for years to saturate himself with
morphine.