the applause absolutely shook the theatre. “Nothing was heard but cries of ‘Sainval! Sainval! les deux Sainval!’ The presence of the guard had no effect; the pit that night would have opposed a regiment.”

Alarmed by these demonstrations, the Gentlemen of the Chamber decided to mitigate the punishment inflicted upon the elder Sainval, who was, accordingly, granted permission to leave Clermont and to play in the provinces. Everywhere she was received with frantic enthusiasm. At Bordeaux, at the conclusion of the play, two cupids descended from a cloud to crown her with laurels, and the audience pelted her with flowers until the stage resembled a flower-garden.

By far the wisest course would have been to reinstate Mlle. Sainval at the Comédie-Française and thus deprive the turbulent patrons of that institution of any further excuse for demonstrations in her favour and against her rival. But, since the Gentlemen of the Chamber were of opinion that this would be too great a concession to popular clamour, it was decided to endeavour to direct public attention from Mlle. Sainval and her wrongs by recalling Mlle. Raucourt.

Madame Vestris herself seems to have been the first to suggest this step. She was, of course, well aware that if, by any chance, Mlle. Raucourt were to recover the place she had once held in the affections of the public, she herself would be completely overshadowed. But, since her own eclipse would undoubtedly be shared by Mlle. Sainval, whom she now hated far more than she ever had the younger actress, she was prepared to regard that eventuality with complacency.

Mlle. Raucourt, then at Berlin, was accordingly invited to return, and accepted the invitation readily enough, though it may be doubted whether she would have done so at all, could she have foreseen the kind of reception which awaited her. Her creditors, acting doubtless on a hint from an influential quarter, showed no disposition to molest her; but the scandals with which her name had been associated had not been forgotten. Every door was closed to her; no one could be persuaded to have any dealings with this “most compromising of women.”

Friendless and without resources, she knew not where to go, when the good-natured Sophie Arnould offered her hospitality. It was a courageous act on the ex-singer’s part, since her own and Mlle. Raucourt’s enemies did not hesitate to attribute it to the most shameful motives. The same abominable charge which had been brought against the tragédienne was now openly levelled at her.

Sophie, however, cared very little what people might say about her. Not content with extending her hospitality to the proscribed actress, she did everything in her power to interest her friends in favour of her protégée. To please his mistress, the Prince d’Hénin became one of Mlle. Raucourt’s warmest partisans, and used all his not inconsiderable influence to break down the social quarantine to which she was subjected.

Mlle. Raucourt’s reinstatement at the Comédie-Française was more easily proposed than accomplished. The majority of her former colleagues opposed it most strenuously, on the ground that their statutes prohibited the readmission of a player who had been excluded by a vote of the sociétaires, and that the misconduct of the actress in question had injured the company in the estimation of the public. The Gentlemen of the Chamber, however, turned a deaf ear to their remonstrances. Marie Antoinette, a great admirer of Mlle. Raucourt’s acting, and ever ready to take the part of any of her sex whom she considered to have been hardly treated, espoused her cause, and even talked of paying her debts, and on September 11, 1779, the Journal de Paris contained the following announcement:

“Comédie-Française.—We understand that the demoiselle Raucourt, absent from this theatre for three years, will reappear there this evening, in the rôle of Dido.”

Dido, it will be remembered, was the part in which the actress had made her sensational début, seven years before; and the recollection of the triumph she had secured on that occasion had doubtless influenced her choice of this rôle. Now, as then, the doors of the theatre were besieged, and the salle crowded to its utmost capacity. But alas! how different were the feelings which animated the expectant audience! Mlle. Raucourt had been thrust upon the town in defiance of feelings which ought to have been respected; night after night the pit had clamoured for Mlle. Sainval, and, in her stead, it had been given—Raucourt! And to make matters worse, it was an open secret that the Court intended to pay her debts “out of the people’s money.”

Long before the curtain rose, angry murmurs heralded the coming storm, and the moment Dido appeared, it burst in all its fury. The uproar was indescribable. Hisses, groans, and cat-calls came from all parts of the pit. The grossest epithets, the most shocking abuse, were showered upon the unfortunate actress. “It was impossible,” says one account, “to hear a single word of her part. The other actors were allowed to speak, but so soon as her turn arrived, the clamour began again. It is suspected that the partisans of the demoiselles Sainval are no strangers to this fermentation.”

Even more violent was the hostility displayed when, two nights later, Mlle. Raucourt appeared as Phèdre. All who are familiar with Racine’s famous tragedy know that the part of the hapless heroine contains many lines which may be readily applied to her impersonator by a hostile audience, and, in electing to play it, Mlle. Raucourt furnished her enemies with weapons of which they did not fail to make the very fullest use. The well-known lines once addressed by Adrienne Lecouvreur to her rival and would-be assassin, the Duchesse de Bouillion:

were greeted with cries of dissent and uproarious laughter. The words,

were answered with shouts of “C’est vrai! c’est vrai! il y a longtemps!” While when she came to the passage in which Phèdre, in an agony of remorse, exclaims,

the ironical cheering, La Harpe tells us, seemed as if it would never cease. “Neither her beauty nor her sex,” writes Grimm, “could protect her any longer, and never did the public go so far in forgetfulness of its own dignity.”

For these disgraceful scenes, the Duc de Duras seems to have been, in no small measure, responsible. In his anxiety to secure a hearing for Mlle. Raucourt, this well-meaning but maladroit nobleman had foolishly endeavoured to overawe the opposition by trebling the guard and “filling the pit with policemen,” who pounced upon and conducted to prison the most prominent of the disturbers. Such tactics naturally had the effect of exasperating the malcontents to the last degree and of alienating many whose sympathies had hitherto lain with the persecuted actress. “While the Comte d’Estaing is fighting the English, to make them recognise the independence of America,” it was bitterly said, “the Duc de Duras imprisons Frenchmen for refusing to applaud Raucourt!”

Nevertheless, fair-minded persons appear to have been practically unanimous in condemning the conduct of the pit. “Nothing,” writes La Harpe, “can prove more clearly that the spirit of the parterre is changed. The excesses in which it indulges, unknown until now, show how badly composed it is. Never would an assembly of respectable persons permit itself to say to a woman, whatever she might be, that she was ‘le rebut de la nature entière.’ One can decline to listen to her, but it is shocking and abominable to go to such lengths as this.” He adds that, in his opinion, the disturbance was organised by the elder Mlle. Sainval, “who knows better than any one how to set to work the crowd of venal ruffians who compose to-day a third of the parterre, and sometimes make themselves its masters”; and declares that so disgusted is he with the cabals and acrimonious quarrels which divide the theatrical and literary worlds, that he has determined to abandon dramatic criticism altogether, and has, accordingly, resigned his post on the Mercure.[118]

In the face of such bitter hostility as she was called upon to encounter, Mlle. Raucourt might well have been pardoned if she had withdrawn a second time from the stage. That she declined to bow to the storm proves her to have possessed courage and pertinacity of an unusually high order. Indeed, her firmness on the night of Phèdre, when, at each hostile manifestation, she had slowly and deliberately repeated the line which had evoked it, had undoubtedly contributed to exasperate the baser kind of her persecutors. A little reflection, however, sufficed to assure her that, if she wished to regain the indulgence of the public, she must have recourse to other methods, and, accordingly, she addressed to the Journal de Paris the following letter:

This diplomatic epistle seems to have been not without its effect, and, though her reception at the Comédie-Française still left much to be desired, no attempt was made to repeat the violent scenes which had marked her two first performances. On the other hand, her creditors, urged on by her personal enemies, had again taken up arms and left her not a moment’s peace. In order to avoid imprisonment, she was once more on the point of expatriating herself, when a royal edict appeared which “rendered free from all seizures, confiscations, or stoppages the wages and appointments of the players and other persons attached to the theatre, up to the amount of two-thirds, apart from the necessary expenditure for board and lodging.”

It was common belief that this edict had been inspired by the Queen, who had seen in it an economical method of settling the debts of her favourite actress, and its appearance, while saving Mlle. Raucourt from the necessity of choosing between imprisonment and flight, exposed her to a fresh storm of invective. A score of pamphlets and leaflets, some in prose, some in verse, were launched against her, in which she and her supporters, the Duc de Duras, the Prince d’Hénin, Sophie Arnould, Madame Vestris, and Brizard, were assailed in the most violent manner. A few passages from one of these effusions, entitled La Vision du prophète Daniel, will convey a good idea of the methods employed against unpopular personages in the eighteenth century:

The Old Satrap [the Duc de Duras], having banished Mlle. Sainval, “to punish her for having more talents than his concubine [Madame Vestris],” announces his intention of recalling the Harlot of Babylon [Mlle. Raucourt], “whom all nations have rejected,” and forcing the people whom he governs to receive her.

“And one heard a cry: ‘Way, way for the Prince des Nains [the Prince d’Hénin]!’

“And I looked, expecting to behold at the head of a troop of pigmies an abortion.

“And I saw a tall, thin man, with a foolish eye and a silly smile, affecting an air of importance; and what was my surprise to see, through his transparent body, that, in place of blood, a black and poisonous mud circulated in his veins...!”

“And his corrupt heart was falling into rottenness. And one saw there none of those feelings which characterise the nobility; cowardice, poltroonery, debauchery, infamy, deceit, avarice, and duplicity, shared what remained of this gangrened heart.”

“And he made his way through the crowd, leading by the hand a woman, whom I took for a man, from her impudent demeanour, her loud voice, and her gigantic stature [Mlle. Raucourt].

“She cast around her lascivious glances.... And a voice cried: ‘Behold her; the woman who has gone beyond all the abominations wherewith the nations of the earth are soiled.

“ ‘And she is about to renew here the scenes of debauchery and extravagance which she has given elsewhere.’ ”[119]

At the beginning of the following year, the Nouvelles à la main announce that Mlle. Raucourt has repaid the hospitality and protection received from Sophie Arnould by “an act of frightful ingratitude, unhappily but too common among women,” namely, by stealing away from her the Prince d’Hénin, “in order to rivet her fetters upon him.” The writer adds that Sophie is furious, and that the guilty pair, fearful of the consequences of their treachery, have fled to Bagatelle and taken refuge with the Comte d’Artois, who is credited with a desire to participate in the good fortune of the Prince d’Hénin.

The report that the prince had taken Mlle. Raucourt under his protection, in the technical sense of the term, was true; but, so far from having sought refuge with the Comte d’Artois, at Bagatelle, he appears to have rented the château from its royal owner. Sophie Arnould, if she cherished any animosity against the offenders—which is open to question, the probability being that she and the prince were by this time heartily tired of one another—would have been far more likely to revenge herself by some biting bon mot than by personal injury.

Paris and Versailles, we are told, laughed over this adventure till its sides ached, for a whole week. Mlle. Raucourt’s conduct was considered despicable, but there was little pity for Sophie, who, one writer declares, was justly punished “for having welcomed a woman who was the opprobrium of her sex.”

It is to be hoped that the Prince d’Hénin found in Mlle. Raucourt’s society sufficient compensation for being dragged through the same gutters as the tragédienne by the scribes who delighted to assail her, and for the fact that it was now his privilege to deal with the horde of creditors who were “perpetually howling at her skirts.” To do him justice, meanness was not one of his failings; but adversity had not taught the lady wisdom, at least so far as financial matters were concerned, and no sooner did her unfortunate lover discharge one debt than she appears to have straightway contracted another. Under date September 16, 1781, we read in the Mémoires secrets:

“Queen Melpomene is more than ever ruined by debt. The Prince d’Hénin, to aid her to escape the pursuits of her creditors, has taken over all the furniture and effects of this actress. But he is summoned to declare upon oath, before the Civil Lieutenant of Paris, whether his ostensible ownership is not simulated.”

It would be interesting to know what course the prince adopted under these somewhat embarrassing circumstances; but, unfortunately, the chroniclers do not tell us.

In the meanwhile, Mlle. Raucourt was seeking consolation for her many troubles in the cultivation of the Muses. She was at work upon “a drama in three acts and in prose,” entitled Henriette, adapted, it would appear, from a play which she had seen at Warsaw, some years before. The plot was briefly as follows:

A Prussian colonel, Stelim by name, wounded in a duel, is carried to the house of Henriette’s father and nursed by the lady, who falls deeply in love with her patient. The colonel recovers and returns to his duty, all unconscious of the passion which he has inspired. The lovelorn Henriette resolves to follow him, runs away from home, dressed as a man, and enlists in her colonel’s regiment. One day, she surprises her beloved in the act of kissing the hand of a strange lady, upon which, unaware that the latter is only his sister, she is so overcome by jealousy and mortification that she deserts. She is pursued, recaptured, tried by court-martial, and condemned to be shot; but, at the last moment, her secret is discovered, and all ends happily.

Henriette did not reach the stage of the Comédie-Française without encountering many difficulties. In the Warsaw play, Frederick the Great and his army had been treated with very scant respect; and the Prussian Ambassador now demanded that Mlle. Raucourt’s adaptation should be very strictly scrutinised, and that “all passages calculated to wound the King his master eliminated.” As there seem to have been a good many of these, it was feared, at first, that the play would be mutilated beyond recognition, even if it were not prohibited altogether. But the Prince d’Hénin left no stone unturned to rescue his mistress’s work from the claws of the censor, and, after many conferences and much correspondence, it was finally decided to spare those passages “in which the impertinence towards the King of Prussia was more remarkable for its intention than for its effect.”

The play was produced on March 1, 1782, before a densely crowded house, which the authoress, by a very adroit manœuvre, had taken care to predispose in her favour. It was then the custom on first nights to reserve a large number of the parterre tickets for distribution among the author’s friends, who, of course, applauded enthusiastically, no matter how coldly the production might be received by the general public. But Mlle. Raucourt refused to avail herself of this privilege, declaring that “if her drama were a good one, it would succeed on its own merits”; a decision which, we are told, was received with universal applause.[120]

On the whole, the verdict of the public was favourable. “The first act,” say the Mémoires secrets, “was thought cold, but the second excited long, frequent, and sincere applause. The third act was also applauded, though with less enthusiasm.”

The critics were, however, anything but kind. Grimm describes the subject as “monstrous”; La Harpe stigmatises the work as “an absurd and foolish rhapsody,” a striking proof of “the decadence of talents and the corruption of taste”;[121] while the Mercure, after declaring that the play possesses many faults and advising Mlle. Raucourt “to treat of subjects with a truer and worthier moral end,” declines to say any more. “The author is a woman, and we do not wish to play with her the part of Diomed.”[122]

But whatever opinions they may have held in regard to the merits of the work itself, every one agreed that Mlle. Raucourt was charming in the uniform of a Prussian soldier; and La Harpe states that people went two or three times solely to see her masquerading as a man.

Her success in Henriette encouraged Mlle. Raucourt to undertake a real masculine part, and, two years later (March 1784), she secured a genuine triumph, as a captain of dragoons, in a play by Rochon de Chabannes, called Le Jaloux. The ease with which she wore the uniform appears to have been particularly admired, a circumstance which is not surprising when we remember that, when in hiding, in the summer of 1776, she had worn a very similar dress for more than six weeks.

“What an actor that Raucourt is!” remarked the younger Sainval, who enjoyed a not undeserved reputation as a wit. “And what a pity she persists in wishing to play women’s parts!”

Little by little the hostility of which Mlle. Raucourt had so long been the object subsided. Slowly but surely the tragédienne recovered the ground she had lost, until, in 1786, we find the Mémoires secrets declaring that “she will soon take rank with the greatest actresses,” and that “the most critical amateurs were fain to confess that she had made prodigious improvement.”

This happy result seems to have been due partly to a genuine love of her art, which led her to devote far more time to serious study than had been the case in earlier years, and partly to the exercise of a good deal of tact—willingness to understudy her former rivals, to condescend to the parts of nurse and confidante, and, in short, to do almost anything that was required of her—which had disarmed the jealousy of her colleagues and rendered her an almost popular member of the troupe. It was certainly not attributable to any change in her morals, for if scandal were no longer busy with her name, it was from no lack of material. In the years immediately preceding the Revolution, however, people had more important matters to discuss than the amours of actresses.

The Revolution very nearly proved fatal to Mlle. Raucourt. The questions which were agitating the public mind were very far from leaving the national theatre undisturbed. “Even our little green-room,” writes Fleury, “was not exempt from the invasion of the moment. Melpomene and Thalia had the mortification to see their sacred altars profaned by the party pamphlets of the day, their venerated sanctuary converted into a political club.” The house of Molière, in fact, was divided against itself. Mlle. Raucourt, Molé, Fleury, and Louise Contat had tasted too many of the sweets of Court favour not to deplore deeply the fall of the old régime; while, on the other hand, Talma, Madame Vestris, Dugazon, and Mlle. Deschamps espoused the popular side with the fervour of rooted conviction. Of the remainder, the majority were either Royalists or moderate constitutionalists.[123]

This divergence of political opinion soon led to angry recriminations and thence to an open rupture, and, in the spring of 1791, Talma and his friends, finding their position growing intolerable, withdrew from the company, to found, at the Palais-Royal, the Théâtre-Français de la Rue de Richelieu, which, in the following year, became the Théâtre de la République.

Having purged itself of its Republican members, the Comédie threw itself boldly into the political strife, and, throughout the terrible winter of 1792-93, allowed no opportunity to slip of advocating the restoration of order and security. On January 3, 1793, during the King’s trial, it produced a play, by Jean Laya, entitled Les Amis des Lois, in which Robespierre (under the name of Nomophage), Marat, and other Montagnards were held up to ridicule and odium. How such a play contrived to escape the vigilance of the Republican censors is not easy to understand, since so thinly veiled were the allusions that almost every passage was punctuated by the cheers and hooting of an excited audience. It was, of course, speedily suppressed, and from that moment the doings of the Comédie were closely watched by the sanguinary faction now rising to supremacy in the State, which only awaited an opportunity of closing the theatre and arraigning the whole company before the Revolutionary Court.

An adaptation of “Pamela,” by François de Neufchâteau, afterwards Minister of the Interior, which contained not a little material calculated to awaken regret for the proscribed nobility, provided the Jacobins with the pretext they desired, and, on September 3, the whole of the players, with the exception of Molé, who had contrived to effect his escape, and Des Essarts, who was taking the waters at Baréges, were arrested and conveyed to the Madelonettes, in the Quartier Saint-Martin-des-Champs, and Sainte-Pélagie, in the Rue de la Clef; the men being assigned to the former prison and the women to the latter.

That the players, or at any rate those of them who held the most pronounced counter-revolutionary opinions, were doomed, was the opinion of even their most sanguine friends. The Revolutionary Court, which had been created in the previous March, to judge without appeal conspirators against the State, still retained all the forms of justice—it was not until June 1794 that the hearing of counsel and calling of witnesses were dispensed with—but its proceedings were, in the great majority of cases, a hollow farce. The judges were appointed from the ranks of the most ruthless Terrorists; the jurymen, nominated by the Convention, were all “gens d’expédition”; while, as to give evidence on behalf of an accused person was to incur the danger of sharing his fate, witnesses for the defence could with difficulty be induced to come forward.

For some cause which is not quite certain, but was probably, as Fleury suggests, the fear of disseminating the small-pox, at that time prevailing in the Madelonettes, the case of the imprisoned players was not dealt with for more than nine months. At length, on Messidor 8, the Committee of Public Safety deliberated upon their fate; and Collot d’Herbois sent to Fouquier-Tinville the accusatory documents against Dazincourt, Fleury, Mlles. Raucourt, Louise and Émilie Contat, and Lange, who were considered the most culpable, accompanied by the following letter:

“Herewith I send you the documents relating to the actors of the Comédie-Française. In common with all patriots, you know how counter-revolutionary their conduct has been. You will bring them before the Court on Messidor 13. With regard to the others, there are some among them who may be punished with banishment. But we will see what can be done with them after the others have been tried.”

And on the margin of each of the six dossiers, Collot d’Herbois, in his own hand, had traced a capital G in red ink. For the docile Fouquier-Tinville that capital G signified: “Guillotinez!”

The trial was fixed for Messidor 13, and, on the following day, it was intended that Mlle. Raucourt and her five colleagues should make their final bow to the public, on the Place de la Révolution.

However, neither trial nor execution ever took place, for, on the morning of the 13th, it was found that the six dossiers had mysteriously disappeared, and all efforts to recover them proved fruitless.

Let us see what had become of them.

In conformity with the usual practice, the papers had been sent by Fouquier-Tinville to the Bureau des Pièces Accusatives at the dismantled Tuileries. Now, in this department there was a clerk named Charles de Labussière, who had accepted the post as a means of securing his own safety, and who at heart was a devoted Royalist. Through Labussière’s hands passed all the documents relating to prisoners awaiting trial and, whenever he could do so with but little fear of discovery, he did not hesitate to destroy them. At first, he observed great caution and confined himself to abstracting a few pages from the portfolios; but, so soon as he became aware of the reckless disorder which characterised the proceedings of the fatal committee, he enlarged the scope of his operations and is said to have saved some hundreds from the guillotine, among whom was no less a personage than Joséphine de Beauharnais, whom Fate subsequently raised to the imperial throne of France. The method he adopted was an ingenious one. As it was then summer and exceedingly hot weather, and the lighting of a fire might have attracted attention, instead of burning the papers, it was his practice to soak them in water, until the bulky parchments had become balls of soft paste, which could be stowed away in his pockets, and to await a favourable opportunity of throwing them into the Seine.

On the night of Messidor 9, Labussière abstracted the papers relating to the imprisoned actors and carried them off. He had, however, a very narrow escape of detection. On his way to the river, his movements aroused the suspicion of a patrol, by whom he was arrested; and he would undoubtedly have been searched and the papers discovered, but for the timely arrival of an official of the Committee of Public Safety, who recognised him and ordered his release.[124]

Thus the players were saved, for before a new brief could be prepared, came “that happiest and most genial of revolutions, the Revolution of the 9th Thermidor,” which brought the Terror to a close and freedom to so many hundreds of prisoners.

Three weeks later, the members of the Comédie-Française reappeared at their theatre in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, now called the Théâtre de l’Égalité. La Métromanie and Les Fausses Confidences composed the programme, and the players, notwithstanding the reactionary views they were known to hold, had a great reception from an immense audience, though, remarked Louise Contat sarcastically, nothing like so large a one as there would have been to see them guillotined.

The players, however, did not remain many months in their old home. The Faubourg Saint-Germain, so long the centre of rank and wealth, was being abandoned in favour of more central spots, while, as a result of the existing free trade in theatrical matters, there were now several playhouses within a narrow radius of the Palais-Royal, whose advantage of situation rendered them formidable competitors. In January 1795, accordingly, the members of the Comédie-Française, not, as may be supposed, without many regrets, migrated to the Théâtre Feydeau, a house which had been erected, some years before, for a company of Italian farceurs, and was now under the control of a speculative gentleman named Sageret.

To be the paid servant of Sageret, who does not appear to have borne the best of reputations, seemed to Mlle. Raucourt a kind of degradation—the arts and humanity, she declared, cried out against the subjection under which they had been led to place themselves; and, in the following December, that lady withdrew from the company, followed by Larive, Mlle. Joly, Saint-Prix, and several others, and took possession of a theatre in the Rue de Louvois, intending apparently to make it the central point of a reunion of the entire company.

The flower of the Comédie-Française was now divided between three playhouses: the Théâtre de la République, the Théâtre Feydeau, and the Théâtre de Louvois. Of these the latter, which was inaugurated on Nivôse 5, Year v. (December 25, 1796), with Iphigénie and a little play by Laya, entitled Les Deux Sœurs, was for a time the most successful; Mlle. Raucourt securing a great personal triumph in another masculine part—that of the hero in Legouvé’s Laurence. Laurence, it may be explained, was the young gentleman who became enamoured of Ninon de Lenclos without knowing that he was her son.

The Directory, however, like the despotism which it had succeeded, kept a jealous eye on the theatres, and was in the habit of closing them, temporarily or altogether, upon the slightest provocation; and an incident which took place during the performance of Les Trois Frères rivaux ruined all the hopes of Mlle. Raucourt. One of the characters, addressing his valet-de-chambre, by name Merlin, exclaims:

“Monsieur Merlin, you are a scoundrel! Monsieur Merlin, you will end by being hanged!”

Now Merlin de Douai, the Minister of Justice, was just then in very bad odour with the public; and the audience applied the speech to him and cheered vociferously for several minutes.

A few days later (September 9, 1797), at the moment when the curtain was about to rise on a performance of the Barbier de Seville, an order arrived forbidding all further representations at the Théâtre de Louvois.

Mlle. Raucourt made every effort to obtain a revocation of the order, but to no purpose. However, she was not long without a theatre, as, at the beginning of the following year, she contrived to secure possession of the former seat of the Comédie-Française, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, henceforth to be known as the Odéon, which she opened with a performance of Phèdre. Shortly afterwards, the Théâtre de la République shared the fate of the Théâtre de Louvois, the political opinions of Talma and his associates being too advanced to please the Government. The enterprising Sageret thereupon induced the homeless players to join forces with their former colleagues at the Théâtre Feydeau, and took over the management of the Odéon from Mlle. Raucourt, his intention being that the actors under his command should appear at either theatre in turn. But Sageret became bankrupt and disappeared; the Odéon was completely destroyed by a fire, the cause of which was never discovered, and Paris found itself without a temple of the legitimate drama.

This unfortunate condition of affairs, however, lasted but a short while. François de Neufchâteau, the author of the Paméla which had proved so fatal, was now Minister of the Interior and honestly desirous of doing everything in his power to promote the interests of the drama. Through his influence, in May 1799, a wise measure of the Consular Government reunited in a single society the scattered members of the old Comédie-Française, and placed at its disposal the salle of the Palais-Royal (formerly the Théâtre de la République), which it has not ceased to occupy to this day.

Mlle. Raucourt, to her honour be it said, never made any secret of her monarchical sympathies. During the Directory, she was a bright and shining light of what was known as “Le petit Coblentz,” an association of Royalists which held its meetings at a house in the Boulevard des Italiens and strove, by force of jests, sarcasms, and epigrams, to upset the Republic. She wore on her spencer eighteen buttons, “a delicate allusion to Louis XVIII., the legitimate sovereign.” And when she fanned herself, it was with one of those famous weeping-willow fans, the folds of which formed the face of Marie Antoinette.

Nevertheless, Mlle. Raucourt had, personally, but little cause to complain of the Directory. Her antagonism to the Government did not extend to its agents, through the good offices of some of whom she contrived to make a considerable fortune, by judicious speculation in assignats, army contracts, and confiscated estates. She now discharged her debts, and bought “a palace” in the Rue Royale, with a spacious garden attached, where she gave sumptuous fêtes, to which all fashionable Paris was invited. Nothing so delightful as her boudoir, we are assured, had ever been seen before; the fittings were of green and gold, and the chimney-piece of blue marble.

After the establishment of the Empire, Napoleon, who was a great admirer of Mlle. Raucourt’s acting, accorded her a handsome pension and engaged her to organise a troupe of French players, to travel through Italy and give performances in the principal towns, with the idea of extending French influence in that country. In Italy, Mlle. Raucourt remained several years, paying, however, occasional visits to Paris, when she appeared at the Comédie-Française, generally in the parts of mothers or queens, and always with great success. Madame Vigée Lebrun tells us that she remained to the last a great tragédienne, but that, with advancing years, her voice became so harsh that, when not looking at her, people might have imagined themselves listening to a man.[125]

Mlle. Raucourt retired from the stage in 1814, her farewell appearance at the Comédie-Française being as Catherine de Medicis, in the États de Blois of Raynouard. On January 15 of the following year, she died, after a short illness, “thanking God that she had been permitted to salute the return of her legitimate King.”

The funeral, which took place two days later, was the occasion of a painful scandal. From the earliest days of the Restoration, the clergy, relying on the support of the new Government, had shown themselves as intolerant towards the actor as had those of the old régime. Mlle. Raucourt’s house was in the Rue du Helder, that is to say, in the parish of Saint-Roch, and it was in that church that the service should have been held. The curé, however, flatly refused to celebrate it. “Actors,” said he, “are excommunicated, and the time has come to revert to the rigorous execution of the canons of the Church.” It was in vain that he was reminded of the never-failing charity of the deceased woman towards the poor of his parish, and the generous gift which he himself had received each year for the needs of his church. He remained deaf to all representations and entrenched himself behind the orders of the Archbishop of Paris.

To obtain justice, the members of the Comédie-Française addressed a petition to the King, but the morning of the interment came without bringing an answer from his Majesty. In the meanwhile, the news of the refusal of the curé of Saint-Roch to accord ecclesiastical burial to the remains of the great actress had become common knowledge and had aroused widespread indignation. An enormous crowd, numbering fully 15,000 persons, assembled in the Rue du Helder and the adjoining streets, among which might be observed several actors of the Comédie in the uniform of the National Guards. At the moment when the cortège left the house, the police gave the order to proceed directly to the cemetery; but the crowd interfered and compelled the hearse to drive towards Saint-Roch. On entering the Rue de la Michodière, a police-officer rushed to the horses’ heads, to turn them in the direction of the boulevard, but was roughly pushed aside; and the procession, growing in size every moment, pursued its way towards Saint-Roch.

When the church was reached, the principal door was found closed, a circumstance which threw the mob into a frenzy of anger. Some proposed to break down the door, others to carry the corpse to the Tuileries or the archbishop’s palace; while cries of “Le curé à la lanterne!” were raised, and if that intolerant ecclesiastic had had the temerity to show himself, it is to be feared that he would have been very roughly handled.

The actors in the procession, alarmed at all this uproar, the blame for which, they feared, would be laid upon them, took advantage of a moment when the more violent section of the crowd was occupied in endeavouring to force the great door of the church, to make the cortège resume its progress towards Père-Lachaise. The mob, however, gave chase, overtook the hearse at the top of the Rue Traversière, and brought it back in triumph to Saint-Roch.

In the meanwhile, a deputation had started for the Tuileries; Louis XVIII. consented to admit it to his presence, and Huet, an actor of the Opéra-Comique, harangued the monarch with so much eloquence, that, some days later, he received an intimation that a course of foreign travel might not be without benefit to his health. However, his representations had the desired effect; for the King promised to interfere without delay, sent orders to the curé to receive the body, and, for greater security, despatched his own almoner to read the service.

The orders of the King arrived only just in time to prevent a serious affray between the infuriated mob and the troops who had been summoned to quell the disturbance. The great door was then opened, and the coffin, borne on the shoulders of the crowd, was carried to the foot of the altar, where the people themselves lighted the candles. The almoner of the Court arrived, accompanied by two choristers, and performed the service, at the conclusion of which an immense concourse of people followed the cortège as far as Père-Lachaise.[126]

IV

MADAME DUGAZON

The grace, charm, and naïveté with which she rendered it decided her future. Pleased at finding his previsions confirmed, the composer advised her to devote herself seriously to the study of music, promising that he would bear her in mind; and from that day the girl “divided her time between dancing, which was her duty, and the study of music, which was her passion.”[127]

She was fortunate in her teachers, particularly in Madame Favart, who, with a magnanimity far from common on the stage, did all in her power to aid and encourage the young aspirant. The lessons were not thrown away, nor was the pupil wanting in gratitude; for even in her old age, when she had retired from the theatre, Madame Dugazon could not mention the name of Justine Favart without tears in her eyes.

At length, on June 19, 1774, Mlle. Lefèvre was promoted to a definite part, that of Pauline, in Sylvain, words by Marmontel, music by Grétry. Her success was instantaneous, unprecedented. At a single bound, she attained the highest rank, an elevation from which she never afterwards descended. Never in the history of the Comédie-Italienne had such talent been exhibited by so young an actress, and never had talent been so keenly appreciated by its patrons. It sufficed for her to undertake the principal part in any new work to ensure for it a favourable, if not a triumphant, reception. Les Événements imprévus, l’Amant jaloux, Les Amours d’été, and many other pieces owed the vogue which they enjoyed entirely to her masterly impersonations.

Four days after her appearance in Sylvain, Mlle. Lefèvre was received à l’essai, with a salary of 1800 livres, which, in the following April, was increased to 2400 livres. But promotion was slow in those days, even for the most brilliant talents, and it was not until April 7, 1776, that she became a sociétaire.[128]

But long before this—almost, indeed, from the evening on which she had first played Pauline—the public had taken her to its heart. People seemed never tired of lauding “her sympathetic voice, her exquisite sensibility, her gaiety, which was so contagious, her acting, which was so tender and impassioned.” Some enthusiasts even went so far as to declare that such remarkable talent must be the product of some divine inspiration.

Mlle. Lefèvre was not strictly beautiful, but “adorably pretty,” dainty, and refined. She had delicate features, a mobile face, “and an expressive mouth, sometimes mocking, sometimes pouting.” But her greatest charm seems to have been her splendid eyes, fringed with long lashes, which, in turn, “shone with mischief and gaiety, or closed in order to allow the soft tears to flow.” Her figure, we are told, “without being tall, was well-proportioned, and all her movements were characterised by a peculiar charm.”

Naturally, she was speedily surrounded by a throng of adorers. No actress of the time was so sought after, courted, adulated. “Jupiters of all conditions solicited the honour of descending at her feet in a shower of gold.” The most brilliant propositions were made to her: furnished hôtels, gorgeous equipages, ravishing toilettes, parures of diamonds, together with the hearts, if not the hands, of the noblest in the land, were at her disposal. She repulsed them all; she had decided to marry—to marry in her own profession. And her choice fell upon Dugazon, of the Comédie-Française.

A singular character was this Dugazon. Born at Marseilles, in 1749, he made his first appearance on the Paris stage in 1771, and at once succeeded in ingratiating himself with his audience. Handsome and well made, he united to a profound knowledge of his art and a wealth of humour, a physiognomy of extraordinary flexibility, which he could so change at any moment that it seemed as if he had put on a mask. “By the play or the contraction of certain muscles of his face, he possessed the faculty of disfiguring himself instantly and so completely as to become unrecognisable.” There can be no question that he was a great comedian, though his style was in the spirit of farce rather than of comedy, and by the side of Préville, who, with all his vivacity, never condescended to what was low or trivial, he must have appeared a mere caricaturist. But in broad comedy he was unsurpassed, and in the farces of Scarron and Le Grand, as Scapin in the Fourberies, Monsieur Jourdain in the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Mascarille in l’Étourdi, and Sganerelle in Don Juan, no actor of the time could even approach him.

But if the actor was excellent, the man was altogether insupportable. In the café or the tavern, a quarrelsome braggart, as ready with his sword as with his tongue. In the salon—for, in his character of privileged buffoon, he was admitted into the highest circles—a rude jester, who respected neither age nor sex, and who took the most outrageous liberties with every one who did not make him keep his distance. Many are the stories told of his eccentricities, one at least of which will bear repetition here.

One day the actor received a summons to Versailles, from Louis XVI. himself. Wondering much what his sovereign could require of him, he repaired thither, and, on his arrival, was ushered into the King’s cabinet, where he found his Majesty alone. The King bade him be seated, and then informed him that he required his assistance in a matter closely concerning the dignity of the Royal Family. He was, said he, extremely displeased at her Majesty continuing to attend the balls at the Opera, in the face of his oft-expressed disapproval of these gatherings. He had therefore bethought him of a means of curing her of this deplorable weakness for mixed society. Dugazon must attend the next ball, in disguise, treat the august lady as if she were nothing but a common bourgeoise, and so shock and disgust her that she would never care to attend another.

Dugazon obeyed with alacrity; the commission entrusted to him was one after his own heart. At the next ball he appeared disguised as a fishwife, a veritable virago of the Halles, foul of tongue, unkempt and dirty, and, taking the Queen aside, behaved to her—it was the King’s express command, be it remembered—with such outrageous coarseness and familiarity that the spectators were absolutely horrified.

Next morning, the King slyly inquired how her Majesty had enjoyed herself the previous evening.

“Never,” answered Marie Antoinette, laughing heartily, “never was I so much diverted as yesterday!”

The marriage between Louise Lefèvre and Dugazon was celebrated at Saint-Eustache on August 20, 1776. It was not a happy one. The husband was bad-tempered, exacting, and jealous; the wife pleasure-loving, coquettish and self-willed. Before the honeymoon was well over, they were quarrelling like cat and dog. Before a year had passed, their domestic differences were the talk of Paris. Madame’s marriage vows weighed very lightly upon her, and she made but small attempt to disguise her amours; Monsieur went about, complaining to every one whom he could persuade to listen to him of his wife’s conduct, and boasting of the terrible retribution he intended for her lovers.

In 1778, there was a grave scandal. A certain M. de Cazes, a young maître des requêtes, fell madly in love with Madame Dugazon, who condescended to reciprocate his passion. In order to conceal their intrigue and, at the same time, facilitate their interviews, M. de Cazes presented the Dugazons to his father, a wealthy farmer-general, who invited them to his house, where actor and magistrate often performed scenes from popular comedies for the entertainment of the company. Their most diverting performance, however, took place in private, a fact to be regretted, since it must have been worth going a very long way to see.

Dugazon had for some time suspected the motive of his introduction to this family and the very cordial reception which had been accorded him. But the guilty pair had observed so much discretion that he had not a particle of evidence to justify his interference and was, therefore, at a loss how to proceed. Jealousy, however, prompted him to a bold move. One morning, M. de Cazes was in his cabinet, dreaming of his inamorata, when Dugazon entered unannounced, and, locking the door behind him, drew a pistol from his pocket, held it to the young man’s head, informed him that he knew everything, and that he would blow out his brains on the instant, if he did not immediately deliver up his wife’s portrait and letters.

MADAME DUGAZON From an engraving by Monsaldi after the painting by Jean Baptiste Isabey
MADAME DUGAZON
From an engraving by Monsaldi after the painting by Jean Baptiste Isabey

The unfortunate gallant believed that Madame Dugazon had made a confession to her husband or that in some way he had been betrayed, and, in fear and trembling, handed over both portrait and letters to his assailant, who retired, enchanted with the success of his expedition.

No sooner, however, had the actor and his pistol departed, than M. de Cazes’s alarm gave way to indignation, and he followed in pursuit, shouting: “Thief! Assassin! Stop the villain!” And the servants, roused by his cries, came running to the spot.

Dugazon, who was leisurely descending the stairs, turned round, and, in no way disconcerted, coolly replied: “Perfect, Monsieur; admirably played! The scene is excellent! The servants would be quite deceived by it, were they not accustomed to our farces.” Then, without quickening his pace, he passed through the astonished lackeys—who, uncertain whether it was a comedy or not, did not dare to lay hands on him—gained the door, made the discomfited magistrate a profound congé, and swaggered off.

Some days later, M. de Gazes happened to be on the stage of the Comédie-Italienne, at the conclusion of the performance, and was there espied by Dugazon, who could not resist the temptation to read his wife’s admirer a second lesson. Accordingly, he waited until the crowd had dispersed and he was unobserved, and then, stealing up behind the maître des requêtes, dealt him four or five sharp cuts across the shoulders with a cane.

The luckless young man turned round, furious with rage and pain, and, perceiving his “rival,” poured forth a torrent of abuse and threats.

The actor, quite unmoved, begged him to explain himself and inquired, with a bland smile, if he were rehearsing a tirade from some play.

The infuriated magistrate rejoined by calling Dugazon “an assassin,” and asserting that he had just dealt him several blows with a cane.

The latter assumed an air of injured innocence, assured M. de Cazes that he must be labouring under some extraordinary delusion, and inquired how he could possibly imagine that a poor player like himself should have been guilty of so shocking an outrage.

As there were no witnesses to the assault, and M. de Cazes had no mind to give the actor, who was an expert swordsman, the satisfaction of running him through the body, the affair went no further. Dugazon, however, did not fail to boast everywhere he went of the thrashing he had inflicted on madame’s lover; conduct which, the Mémoires secrets tell us, “revolted honourable men.”

If Dugazon had taken upon himself to detect and punish all his wife’s infidelities, it is to be feared that he would have had but little time to devote to his professional duties. “The singing-bird had taken flight and returned but seldom to the conjugal nest.” However, for a time, he did his best, and, in the course of the following year, had an affray at the house of Sallé, the director of the winter Vauxhall, with the Marquis de Langeac, who had succeeded M. de Cazes in the actress’s affections.

Dugazon had written an angry letter to his wife, reminding the lady of her numerous escapades and bitterly reproaching her with having accepted the homage of M. de Langeac, to whom he alluded in terms of the most unmitigated contempt. This letter Madame Dugazon promptly handed to the marquis, who, talking the matter over with his friend Sallé, announced his intention of subjecting the actor to “a hundred blows with his cane,” on the very next occasion on which they should chance to meet. Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when the object of his resentment, who had been an unseen auditor of all that he had said, stood before him, and, with a profound bow, intimated that he was entirely at Monsieur le Marquis’s service.

The marquis replied with a blow from his fist; the actor returned the compliment with interest, and an Homeric combat was in progress, when the bystanders interfered and separated the parties.

This adventure had no more consequences than the other. Dugazon, who, to do him justice, was no coward, would have been only too ready to continue the battle in the manner prescribed by the etiquette of that day. But M. de Langeac, a notorious poltroon—he had, some time before, taken, without any attempt at retaliation, a severe thrashing from Guérin, the Prince de Conti’s surgeon—sheltered himself behind his rank and declined to cross swords with an actor.

His affray with the Marquis de Langeac appears to have been the last occasion on which Dugazon attempted to avenge his honour. He resigned himself to the situation; and when, soon afterwards, the “singing-bird” flew away altogether and established herself in a gilded cage prepared for her by a rich financier of the name of Boudreau, received the news with fashionable complacency. From that time, husband and wife never lived together again, and, when the Revolution came, both hastened to avail themselves of the law permitting divorce.

Madame Dugazon had barely remained long enough in the gilded cage to take stock of all the marvels of art and decoration which the amorous financier had provided for her benefit, when she fell in love with a foreign count, whose name the chroniclers of scandal, with a discretion very uncommon with them, forbear to mention, and left poor M. Boudreau to meditate upon the inconstancy of woman. This last affair would appear to have been a serious one, on the lady’s part, at any rate; but it was of very brief duration, as the count was suddenly recalled to his own country, and she saw him no more.

Consolation, however, was not long in forthcoming. Her lover’s departure happened to synchronise with the arrival from Bordeaux of a handsome youth of eighteen, “with the most interesting face conceivable, and the most surprising, the most wonderful voice possible to imagine.” Without knowing a single note of music, he could imitate the voice of every singer of the Opera and the sound of every instrument in the orchestra, so perfectly as to deceive even the most experienced ear. By himself, it was said, he could imitate an entire opera. This prodigy, Garat by name, aroused a perfect furore in fashionable, as well as in musical circles, and after Marie Antoinette had sent a coach and six to fetch him to Versailles, the enthusiasm of the ladies was raised to the highest pitch; they literally fought for him. Madame Dugazon bore away the prize, and is believed to have given the youthful singer lessons in his art as well as in love. But she could not long retain possession of “this brilliant butterfly, who had only to open his wings to alight upon the most beautiful flowers,” and, for the first time in her life, was fated to taste something of the mortification which she had so often occasioned.

From these discreditable gallantries, it is a relief to turn to Madame Dugazon’s professional career, which, happily, seems to have been no more affected by the irregularities of her private life than those of Mlle. Clairon and Madeleine Guimard. The enthusiasm with which even the most fastidious of her contemporaries acclaim her talent is truly remarkable. “I have often,” writes Bouilly, “admired Madame Saint-Huberty, at the Opera, in lyric tragedy, Mlle. Raucourt in the masterpieces of our French stage, and the brilliant Mlle. Contat in comedy; but not one of these celebrated women united, in my opinion, that variety of perfections, that incomprehensible medley of pathos and gaiety, of nobleness and simplicity, of finesse and naturalness, which made Madame Dugazon admired in the different rôles wherein, in turn, she showed herself princess and peasant, soubrette and tender mother, ingénue and coquette, wealthy woman and poor one. She seized with an admirable fidelity upon all the shades of Nature, all the movements of the human heart, all the inspirations of the most eager imagination.... One was, in turn, moved, ravished, transported; from tears the most abundant one passed to laughter the most irrepressible, from terror to gaiety the most natural and the most infectious; one passed, in a word, through all the windings of the human heart; one experienced all the sensations which leave a perfect remembrance. And this was the work of one woman, whose admirable intelligence did not cease to be the interpreter of Nature, whose talent, flexible and always natural, was cited by authors and friends of the art as the most perfect model possessed by our lyric stage.”[129]

And Madame Vigée Lebrun says:

“And now I come to her whose dramatic career I have followed from beginning to end, to the most perfect actress ever possessed by the Opéra-Comique, to Madame Dugazon. Hers was a natural talent, which owed nothing apparently to study. Noble, naïve, graceful, piquant, she had twenty faces, and always suited her accent to the person she represented at the time. Her voice was somewhat weak, but she adapted it equally well to tears, laughter, and every situation.”[130]

That Madame Dugazon was far greater as an actress than as a vocalist there can, we think, be no question. The father of French opéra-comique, Grétry, gives it as his opinion that she was not a singer at all, but “an actress who spoke song with the truest and most passionate expression.” And Boïeldieu, the author of La Dame Blanche, says much the same. “What an astonishing woman!” he exclaimed, after the first performance of Le Calife de Bagdad. “They say that she does not understand music; yet I never heard any one sing with such taste and expression, such nature and fidelity.”[131]

Madame Dugazon’s voice indeed, though limited in range, was pure and flexible and of an enchanting tone, and, as was the case with Garat, her natural endowments far outweighed the disadvantages of a deficient musical education.

To recall all the successes of this charming actress, it would be necessary, as M. Campardon very truly remarks, to cite practically the whole répertoire of the Comédie-Italienne, and we will, therefore, confine ourselves to those of her “creations” upon which contemporary writers have left us the fullest information.

An opera called Blaise et Babet, libretto by Monvel, music by Desaides, produced on June 30, 1783, marks the commencement of the most brilliant period of her career. This little work provided Madame Dugazon with a magnificent triumph. “What fine and delicate shades,” writes Grimm, “does the voice of Madame Dugazon impart, in this rôle of Babet, to the most simple expressions! There is not one of her inflections, there is not a movement in her acting, which does not add to the movement of the scene, and does not vary it with as much truth as grace.”[132] And the critic of the Mercure writes: “It is difficult to describe all the shades of talent that Madame Dugazon has developed in the rôle of Babet. Natural, comical, naïve, intelligent, sensible, she has not allowed one of the traits which make up the character of the person whom she represents to escape.”

The third performance of Blaise et Babet was graced by the presence of the Queen, who was so enchanted with the part played by Madame Dugazon that she forthwith resolved to act it herself, and soon afterwards the piece was presented at the royal theatre at Trianon, with Marie Antoinette as Babet. Madame Dugazon and Fleury were summoned to Court to preside over the rehearsals and aid the Queen with their counsels. Nor were their pains thrown away, for, if we are to believe the Fleury Mémoires, her Majesty’s rendering of Babet almost equalled that of the actress herself:

“She was a thousand times to be applauded, when she was vexed, crushed her flowers, threw them into the basket, and exclaimed, with the most charming toss of her head: ‘Tu m’as fait endêver... endêve... endêve!’

“It was such a delightful medley of pouting and sentiment, of tears and vexation, of anger and love, that I saw proud courtiers moved by it, and, courtiers though they were, forget to applaud, because they were weeping.”

The comedy entitled Alexis et Justine, by the same authors, produced on January 17, 1785, was for Madame Dugazon, who played the part of Justine, the occasion of another triumph, which Grimm records in these terms:

“Madame Dugazon has just developed a new kind of talent in the rôle of Justine. It was difficult to unite to this degree the most lively and the most passionate sensibility with a naïveté the most sweet and the most attractive. This charming actress has been truly eloquent in the scene of the second act with M. de Longpré. Our best tragédiennes could not render with more energy and with variations more just and more profound all the sentiment of this part, one of the most pathetic that has ever been seen on the stage.”[133]

In November of the same year, was produced La Dot, a comedy in three acts by Desfontaines, music by Dalayrac, in which Madame Dugazon gave so charming a rendering of the part of the heroine Colette, that a poet, who elected to remain anonymous, but who, M. Campardon thinks, was, in all probability, the author of the piece himself, thanked her in the following verses for the pleasure she had given him: