The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-03-28
ME. BERNHARDTS SEASIDE
 HOME.
A Lonely and Romantic Dwelling on
 the Island of Belleisle-en- -Mer.


 the Island of Belleisle- -en-Mer.
 Hundreds of miles from Paris, at the most lonely end of the rock-bound is land of Belleisle-en-Mer, near Brittany, stands the extremely unpretending but romantic summer home to which Sarah Bernhardt flies each year for health and rest. The savage, seagirt shores to which the tragedienne has trans ferred her rural household goods are so remote that Paris is forgotten there. At Le Fort des Poulains Cor, as it is usually called, Les Poulains') artifice, and sometimes even art, gives place to nature. The charming woman who welcomes her guests so prettily and eff fusively on their arrival at Belleisle has, for the time being, put the foot lights out of her mind and transformed herself by some miracle into an ideal- ized peasant.
 Driving, fishing, shooting and crab catching barefooted among the gigan- tic rocks piled up around her house are the chief pleasures indulged in at Les Poulains by the theatrical queen. She varies them from time to time by talk ing long tramps over the cliffs and through the hamlets which are scat tered here and there between Le Palais and the seaport at which you land af- ter ten miles of tossing up and down in the preposterous little steamboat plying between Belleisle and Quiberon, on the mainland, in Brittany. The peasants within several miles of her diminutive and barren estate all know and speak in glowing terms of the belle dame who is so fond of distribu- ting sWeetmeats and apples and cakes to the children who may cross her path Monsieur le Cure, over at Le Palais, and Monsieur le Maire Che also a priesD speak even more highly of the devout and generous woman who is constant an attendant at mass on Sun days. Notwithstanding her Semitic or igin, Sarah Bernhardt is a sincere, if sometimes rather careless, Catholic. The rude fishermen and fishwives who make up the greater part of Monsieur le Cures congregation were slightly startled at first by the strange cos tunes and the curious ease of the Dame des Poulains. But they soon got | used to her.
 Mme, Sarah's chateau is very prin- itive affair; a plain two-story oblong building, with a parapet (once lined | wifi Tpf years ago it was a genuine fort, occu- | pied by forty men and a few officers There are Algerian suggestions in the white stone walls and brown brick facings of the edifice. In front of the fort, which lies in deep hollow near | the weather-beaten, stormy Pointe des Poulains, stand, like twin sentinels two mighty porcelain storks. The waves rage ceaselessly about the base l of this strange residence. Enormous | powders, moulded into the rough like I ness of monsters grim and horrible surround the house. No human habi tations can be seen from any corner o, the building, with the exception of { melancholy lighthouse and small cot tage owned by the rustic of whom Sa rah bought the five or ten desolat' I acres which adjoin her rocks.
 The interior of the fort, although les Spartan and severe than the exterior is simple One long, broad, lofty vault ed hall-formerly the Sale du Corp des Gardes-serves the tragedienne dining-room and studio combined. l is wainscoted with pinewood an' adorned with ten or twelve '-- n means valuable paintings. On buff near the dining tableSis an array of tn quaint Breton faience exclusively af fected by the fair chatelaine at Le Poulains A huge fireplace and the in
 dispensable chairs, a few lounges an one or two artistic couches drape
 with soft, Oriental stuffs make up tn furniture. Tens of millions of franc have been earned by the great actres
 since old Auber heard her recite tn
 fable of the "Deux Pigeons" wh
 loved so tenderly." Yet at this mo
 ment all the property she owns c
 earth is probably this one rude storm
 swept dwelling on the remote shore (
 a small Breton island.--St James Bud