Like nearly all the members of her profession, Mlle. Contat was exceedingly charitable, and this fact no doubt contributed not a little to the immense popularity which she enjoyed with the playgoing public. At Lyons, on one occasion, she gave a performance for the benefit of the poor of the city, which realised between three and four thousand livres. At Toulouse, where the ten performances originally arranged for had failed to satisfy the enthusiasm of the public, she gave an eleventh, and distributed the proceeds amidst the poor of Baréges, whither she was proceeding to take the waters. Once, when visiting an asylum for persons who had been born blind, to converse with the inmates and inscribe her name on the list of benefactors, she was the recipient of a pretty compliment from a blind poet, who improvised a quatrain, in which he gallantly informed her that she should not so much pity those who had lost their eyes, as those who had been made wretched by the lustre of her own:

By right of her beauty, her talent, and her successes, Mlle. Contat believed herself invested with the right of imposing her will upon her comrades and dramatic authors. With the latter she was frequently at variance. During the rehearsals of Alexandre Duval’s Edouard en Écosse, she demanded some alteration in one of the scenes. The author refused, declaring that the alteration in question would upset all his combinations, and, on the actress insisting on his compliance with her views, appealed to the other players, who, however, maintained a discreet silence, having no mind to contradict their imperious comrade. Beside herself with passion, the latter threw her part at the author’s head, “swearing by all her gods that nothing should induce her to act in any piece of his.” Duval, thereupon, took his manuscript from the hands of the prompters, and stalked out of the theatre, coldly observing that unless the piece was to be played as he had written it, it should not be played at all. A reconciliation between actress and author was subsequently effected, and the play produced, but, some time later, Duval offended the lady beyond all hope of forgiveness, by daring to offer to Madame Talma a part which she had marked for her own.[159]

Mlle. Contat’s jealousy, indeed, caused her to be anything but beloved by her fair comrades at the Comédie-Française. Like Madame Saint-Huberty at the Opera, she could not endure a rival on the stage. She absolutely refused to be doubled, and, even when illness prevented her appearing, it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could be persuaded to allow any one to replace her.

Moreover, she not infrequently abused her position as queen of the theatre, and her endeavours to push the fortunes of her sister, Émilie Contat, to whom she was always deeply attached, at the expense of more deserving young actresses, was a fruitful source of dissension. Émilie, who had made her début, in the autumn of 1784, as Fanchette, in the Mariage de Figaro, was very far from the “deplorable actress” which Gaboriau declares her to have been[160], and in her rendering of the soubrettes of Molière acquired some little distinction. At the same time, she had no pretensions to be the equal of Mlle. Vanhove, who had made her first appearance at the same time; and Mlle. Contat’s efforts to secure precedence for her sister were strongly resented not only in the theatre but outside it, and drew upon her many violent reproaches in both prose and verse. Marie Antoinette herself intervened on behalf of Mlle. Vanhove, whom she had taken under her protection, and secured for her a part which Louise Contat had intended for her beloved Émilie. When the all-powerful actress learnt that her wishes had been subordinated to those of royalty, she exclaimed: “This Queen has a great deal of influence!”

Nevertheless, Mlle. Contat was sincerely attached to the Royal Family, and to Marie Antoinette in particular. One day, the Queen, who intended to be present at a representation of the Gouvernante, sent her word that she should like to see her play the principal rôle. The part was suited neither to the age nor the talent of the lively actress, and was, besides, a long and difficult one. She might, therefore, have fairly begged to be excused, but, eager to please the Queen, she at once began to study it. In less than two days, she had mastered the five hundred verses of which it consisted, and obtained a great success. Writing to one of her friends soon afterwards, she observed, in allusion to this tour de force: “I was ignorant where the seat of memory lay; I know now that it is in the heart.” This letter, found in 1793 among the papers of a suspected person, was made one of the charges against Mlle. Contat, when, in September of that year, she was arrested, with nearly all the members of the Comédie-Française, but, thanks to the courage of Labussière, she escaped the guillotine[161].

On her release from Sainte-Pélagie, Mlle. Contat returned to the Comédie-Française, now called the Théâtre de l’Égalité, from which, in June 1795, she migrated, with her colleagues, to the Théâtre-Feydeau. After the bankruptcy of Sageret and the dispersal of the company he had formed, she accepted an engagement at the Bordeaux theatre, whither Fleury accompanied her. Here she not only acted, but frequently took part in opéra-comique, and, having an agreeable and well-trained voice, greatly delighted her audiences. The enthusiasm of the Bordelais, both inside and outside the theatre, reached such a pitch as to become positively dangerous for its object. Crowds gathered at the stage door to witness her departure at the end of a performance. They surrounded her, and followed her with such transports of delight that, at once flattered and alarmed, she would press close to Fleury’s side and say, with an air of comic gravity: “My friend, these people enchant me. Had we not better call the guard?”

On the reconstitution of the Comédie-Française, in May 1799, Mlle. Contat resumed her place in the company, and speedily regained all her old popularity. Under the Directory and Consulate, indeed, she was more than ever adored by the public and particularly by the youth of the capital, “who, in their anxiety to applaud her, forgot to pay their tailors’ bills.”

In these later years, Mlle. Contat, having become too “majestic” for the Elmires and Célimènes, had been compelled to abandon the emploi in which she was still without a rival, to play young matrons. If she had been admirable in her former répertoire, in her new rôles she is said to have been absolutely inimitable, and, as Madame de Volmar, in the Mariage secret, Julie, in the Dissipateur, and Madame Evrard, in the Vieux Célibataire, to have reached the very perfection of her art.

The irregularities of Mlle. Contat’s youth, and the fact that she had a daughter and two sons—the paternity of at least one of whom seems to have been very much a matter of opinion—to remind the world of her lapses from the path of rectitude, did not deprive her of the friendship and esteem of many whose friendship and esteem were worth possessing. That this should have been the case was due to two reasons: first, to the fact that she had always been careful to observe some degree of decorum in her gallantries and to cause herself to be regarded rather as the victim of an excessive sensibility—a kind of Adrienne Lecouvreur, in fact—than as a lady of easy virtue; and, secondly, to the very high social qualities which she undoubtedly possessed—qualities in which she was surpassed by few of her contemporaries.

In truth, Louise Contat was a species of grande dame, whose salon partook of the appearance of the salons of former times; one of those delightful rendezvous where the exquisite courtesy and tact of the hostess never failed to place every member of the company, from the highest to the lowest, immediately at his ease. To see the actress in the midst of her guests must have been a useful object-lesson for any lady who aspired to social popularity. “With what art she knew how to talk to some the language of the Court of Marie Antoinette, to the generals of their victories, to the orators, to the financiers, of their ambitions or their affairs; to salute a marquis of thirty-six quarterings with a sweeping courtesy, to carve an epigram, to improvise a quatrain, to analyse a play!... So many qualities attracted, conquered, and retained the most rebellious.”[162]

Mlle. Contat’s early education had been somewhat neglected, but she had contrived to atone for its deficiencies by reading and conversation, and by “that precious faculty of assimilation, of transforming in the crucible of an original nature the knowledge and the talent of others into her own.” Her conversation was always charming and witty, though her wit was untinged by malice—“the irony of Voltaire tempered by feminine sweetness.” On occasion, however, she could be very severe upon those who blasphemed her idol—good taste. One day, a hunchbacked duke, a well-meaning, but somewhat maladroit person, was ill-advised enough to remind her of the days, now alas! long past, when she had possessed the most exquisite figure in Paris. Mlle. Contat, though furious at the pleasantry, dissembled her indignation, but bided her time; and when, the conversation happening to turn upon hunchbacked people, the duke observed that Nature, by way of compensation, almost invariably endowed those so afflicted with intelligence of an unusually high order, exclaimed: “Ah! Monsieur le Duc, vous n’êtes que contrefait!”

Yet she was quite incapable of bearing malice, and more than once gave proof of rare magnanimity. Placed under surveillance in her country-house at Ivry during the Terror, she saved the life of one of her persecutors, who, proscribed in his turn, threw himself upon her compassion. For some days, she concealed him in her room, bringing him his food with her own hands. Then, learning that search-parties were scouring the neighbourhood, and that it was no longer safe for him to remain, she took the gardener’s wife into her confidence, dressed herself in the woman’s clothes, disguised her guest as the gardener’s boy, and drove him in a cart laden with vegetables and milk to Choisy-le-Roi, whence he was able to make his escape to Villeneuve-Saint-George and the Forest of Senart.

“Men of letters and actresses,” remarks M. du Bled, “have always possessed an attraction for one another; interest, end, character, all create between them affinities which result in gallantry, in friendship, and in love; the former invent, the latter execute; glory, gain, success, and failure are their common lot; common also the place of triumph, the judge who awards the palm and the hisses.”[163] Mlle. Contat had many friends in the Republic of Letters, and her salon was one of the most brilliant literary resorts in Paris. Thither came Vigée, author of the successful comedies, Les Aveux difficiles, La Fausse Coquette, and L’Entrevue; Desfaucherets, the improviser of proverbs, whose play Le Mariage secret was ascribed by the sycophantic courtiers of the Restoration to Louis XVIII., just as they ascribed to him Arnault’s Marius à Miturnes and Lemierre’s pretty quatrain for a fan:

—Maisonneuve, the author of Roxelane et Mustapha; Arnault, whose once applauded tragedies have long since been forgotten, but whose Souvenirs are still read with pleasure, one of the intimate friends of Bonaparte during the Directory and a confidant of the coup d’État of the 18th Brumaire; and, finally, Lemercier, one of the most original figures of his time—Lemercier, with his half-paralysed body and brilliant wit[164] and feverish energy, perpetually indulging in the wildest pranks and attempting with equal ardour every branch of literature: poems, plays, fiction, and philosophy; a courageous and honest man, too, who declined to bow the knee to Napoleon and saw, in consequence, his works—his chief source of income—spitefully interdicted by the Imperial censors, and the doors of the Academy closed against him.

Under the Empire, the reputation of Mlle. Contat rose, if possible, still higher. Napoleon greatly admired her acting, and she frequently played the leading parts in the theatrical troupe which followed his victorious armies and gave performances in the towns which he had conquered.

On January 26, 1809, Mlle. Contat married Paul Marie Claude de Forges Parny, a retired captain of cavalry, brother—and not nephew, as Gaboriau and several writers state—of the poet, Evarest Désiré Parny.

A few weeks later, yielding to the solicitations of her friends, she decided to retire from the stage, after a career of thirty-four years. It is believed that the attacks made upon her by the critic Geoffroy were not altogether unconnected with this determination. Her last appearance was on March 6, 1809, as the tavern-hostess in Les Deux Pages, on which occasion the whole of the takings were devoted to her benefit. The bill that evening was a triple one. First, Ducis’s adaptation of Othello[165] was presented, with Talma as the Moor. Then came Les Deux Pages; and the entertainment concluded with a grand ballet composed by Gardel, for which all the leading performers of the Opera gave their services. The Emperor and Empress assisted at the representation, which, says the Journal de Paris, was “one of the most brilliant that had taken place at the Théâtre-Français for thirty years.” “The prices,” continues the same journal, “were more than tripled, but, to judge by the eagerness with which the ticket-offices were besieged, one may believe that, even if they had been quintupled, it would not have prevented the theatre from being filled. Mlle. Contat was several times called before the curtain; and all the spectators were unanimous in demanding her reappearance after the performance, which did not conclude until a very late hour.”[166]

After her marriage, Mlle. Contat sold her country-house at Ivry, where she had for many years past spent a good deal of her time, and took up her residence permanently in Paris, where her house became the resort of some of the most agreeable society in the capital, for, as we have seen, she was no less brilliant in private life than on the stage. Unhappily, she did not live long to enjoy her well-earned leisure. She was already suffering from that terrible disease, cancer, and she soon learned—by an accident—that her doom was sealed. “She had been for some time suffering from violent pain in her breast,” says Fleury. “Her medical attendant, alarmed by her increasing illness, recommended her to consult the celebrated Dubois,[167] which she accordingly did. After some conversation with her, Dubois said: ‘Madame, I will prescribe a course of treatment for you, which you must scrupulously follow. Call on me again in about three days’ time, and, in the meanwhile, I will see your doctor.’ On the appointed day, Contat repeated her visit to Dubois. He received her in his private cabinet and, after a little conversation, he left the room, saying he should be with her again in a few moments. Casting her eyes on the doctor’s writing-table, near which she was seated, Contat saw her own name written on a slip of paper. It was merely a medical prescription and, after glancing at it, she laid it down again. But beside it lay a sheet of paper concealed, on which Contat also saw her name written. Unfortunately, she took it up and read it. It was a letter which Dubois had been writing to her doctor. The first few lines over which she cast her eye declared that the patient was doomed, and that it would be useless to subject her to a painful operation, which could not possibly save her. Contat fainted. Dubois, on his return, perceived that she had perused the fatal paper. He bitterly reproached himself with having caused, though innocently, a state of mental despondency calculated to hurry the patient to the grave more speedily even than the disease itself, certain as was its fatal termination. The kind-hearted man paid her the most assiduous attention and sought to cheer her by a faint ray of hope. But in vain; the blow had been struck.

“Contat, however, behaved with no want of fortitude. At the first shock, she was naturally staggered. She afterwards became almost indifferent to her situation. Her mind was cheerful, and she retained her grace and good-humour to the last. When in the midst of her family and friends, she successfully concealed her pain and anxiety. In this manner, she lived two years from the time she so strangely gained the knowledge of her real condition; and it was only within a fortnight before her death that she began to complain. Thus died (March 9, 1813) one of the most brilliant actresses of which the French stage has ever been able to boast.”

Amalrie Contat, Mlle. Contat’s daughter, presumably by the Comte d’Artois, adopted her mother’s profession and made her début, in 1805, as Dorine in Tartuffe, and the soubrette, in Le Cercle, with immense success. Unfortunately, the great hopes then formed of her were very far from being fulfilled; and when, three years later, she retired from the stage, in order to make a rich marriage, she ranked as an actress of only moderate ability.

VI

MADAME SAINT-HUBERTY

A brilliant assembly and a bravely-dressed one too; for even the figurante drawing her eight hundred or a thousand livres a year seemed to find no difficulty in patronising the establishments of M. Pagelle, of Les Traits Galants, or M. Bertin, of the Grand Mogol. There was, however, an exception. In a remote corner sat a young woman alone, whose pale, drawn face bore the marks of cruel struggles and long suffering, and whose simple, black gown, patched in more than one place, afforded a striking contrast to the gorgeous toilettes around her. No one spoke to her, no one heeded her; the gay throng was too much occupied with its own affairs to have a thought to bestow on so insignificant a person, until a movement on her part happened to arrest the attention of a gorgeously-attired damsel, who, with a mocking smile, exclaimed: “Ah, tiens! voilà Madame La Ressource.”[168]

At these words, Gluck, who was talking with the conductor of the orchestra, abruptly terminated his conversation, and, turning round, exclaimed, in a voice which could be heard by all: “You have well named her Madame La Ressource, for one day she will be the resource of the Opera!”

This speech would appear to have been nothing more than a jest on the part of the composer; since never could he have even suspected, at that time, how fully his prediction was to be verified; never could he have foreseen the astonishing triumphs which awaited this humble coryphée, still confined to the rôles of confidante and secondary divinity. For the young woman, “thus derided by vice, thus defended by genius,” was none other than Anne Antoinette Cécile Clavel, known to fame as Madame Saint-Huberty!

The life of Antoinette Clavel had been a peculiarly sad one; one long course of privation, misfortunes, disappointments, and disillusions. Born at Strasburg, on December 15, 1756, she was now in her twenty-first year. Her father, a musician, formerly a member of a French troupe in the service of the Elector Palatine, and, at the time of Antoinette’s birth, attached to the Strasburg theatre, had commenced his little daughter’s musical education before she was well out of the nursery. The child, like Sophie Arnould, early gave promise of exceptional talent. At the age of twelve, she sang to her own harpsichord accompaniment, “with so much taste and sweetness that she excited the admiration of all who heard her.” The fame of her precocious talent quickly spread abroad, and the managers of several foreign and provincial theatres offered her engagements. But her father and mother, “cherishing in her the germ of those virtues with which they had inspired her, had no mind to deliver her youth into distant towns, to the danger of seduction by those amiable and opulent men who delight in the criminal victories they achieve over innocence,” refused to allow her to appear, except at the Strasburg theatre, where “they were able to direct at its outset a career so slippery for a young and inexperienced girl.”

Here she had the good fortune to attract the attention of the leader of the orchestra, Lemoine, a French composer who was later to achieve success in Paris. Lemoine, a kind-hearted and excellent man, gave the girl lessons and allotted her a part in a little piece of his own, Le Bouquet de Colinette. Never was there a more grateful pupil. In after years, Madame Saint-Huberty made the most heroic efforts to assure the success of the somewhat mediocre works of her first professor, of whose kindness to her when she was a child she could never speak without tears in her eyes.

“I used to go to his house in the morning,” she related to one of her friends. “As it was cold and he was not well off, he remained in bed until the morning rehearsal, in order to save wood. When I arrived to take my lesson, I used to find him rolled up in his blankets, with a great woollen night-cap on his head, which reached to his eyes. ‘Ah! there you are, little one,’ he would say to me, and would throw me one of the blankets, in which I wrapped myself as well as I could. Then I used to sing, beating time with my feet with all my strength, in order to keep them warm.

“In the evening, I accompanied my father to the theatre. Often I was a figurante, and Lemoine, who knew that we made but poor cheer at home, always contrived to give me some tit-bits, off which I might make a good supper.

“My father was indebted to him for several pupils, who paid him fairly well. Finally, he presented us to Count Branicki, an immensely wealthy nobleman, at whose house plays were frequently performed.”[169]

Antoinette Clavel had been engaged two or three years at the Strasburg theatre when there arrived in the city a man who described himself as director-general of the “Menus-Plaisirs” of the King of Prussia, and stated that the object of his visit was to seek for fresh talent for the French troupe at Berlin. In his presumed official capacity, he had no difficulty in procuring admission to the coulisses of the theatre, where he soon became on terms of friendly intimacy with the actors and actresses, and with Antoinette in particular. Claude Croisilles de Saint-Huberty, for by that high-sounding name was the gentleman known, was still young, but had seen much of the world, of good appearance, and a fluent talker, whose honeyed words were well calculated to excite the imagination of inexperienced women, for whom he had all the attraction of the successful adventurer.

He made such magnificent promises to Antoinette, and held out to her the hope of such a brilliant career, that, one fine day, in the spring of 1775, the young girl resolved to leave her parents secretly and follow M. Croisilles de Saint-Huberty to Berlin. Here disillusion awaited her. The pretended director of the “Menus-Plaisirs” of the King of Prussia proved to be merely the stage-manager of the French troupe, who could only very partially carry out the conditions of the engagement which had induced Mlle. Clavel to quit the paternal roof.

Whether Antoinette was Saint-Huberty’s mistress, or only, as she herself asserted, an ambitious young artiste decoyed away by the promise of an advantageous engagement is uncertain. But, however that may be, Saint-Huberty was exceedingly anxious to become her husband; nor is his motive difficult to understand. So far from having any right to the aristocratic patronymic he bore, he was the son of a merchant at Metz, named simply Croisilles, and had left home in order to gratify a passion for the stage. A needy and unscrupulous adventurer, he foresaw for the young singer a successful, and possibly a brilliant, career, upon the emoluments of which he might levy toll; while if, by chance, her success was not in accordance with his expectations, he would always be able to obtain the annulment of a marriage contracted in a foreign country and without the consent of the parents of either party. And so from morning until night he importuned Antoinette to marry him, expatiating upon the vast possessions of the house of Saint-Huberty—possessions well-nigh as boundless as his love for her—which, he declared, would one day be his, the brilliant future he could assure his wife, and so forth. Nor did he plead in vain. At the end of four or five months, the poor girl, alone in a foreign city, friendless, and almost penniless, had the weakness to consent; and the marriage was celebrated on September 10, 1775, in the parish of St. Hedgwig, the so-called Saint-Huberty being described as “native of France, stage-manager of the French troupe of his Majesty the King of Prussia,” and Antoinette as “Jungfrau Maria Antonia, native of Strasburg, actress.”[170]

The young bride was very speedily enlightened as to her husband’s real character and the motives which had led him to make her his wife. “The third night of our marriage,” she says, in a memoir which she subsequently drew up for an annulment of the union, “was marked by the grossest language on the part of the sieur Croisilles, accompanied by a pair of sound boxes on the ear, because the counterpane was more on my side than his.” And, a few weeks later, Saint-Huberty secretly quitted Berlin, carrying off everything of value that his wife possessed.

From Berlin, whence the too-pressing attentions of his creditors had been the cause of his abrupt departure, M. Saint-Huberty made his way to Warsaw, from which city he presently wrote to his wife, informing her that he had just formed an operatic company, whose first performance had been warmly applauded at the Polish Court, and that her assistance alone was wanting to make it worthy to perform before the sovereigns of the North.

The rascal’s pen must have been as persuasive as his tongue, since Antoinette at once decided to rejoin her husband. She arrived at Warsaw, only to find that the company which was supposed to have already achieved such great things had, as a matter of fact, never given anything but rehearsals. Finally, however, it gave its first performance in public and, thanks to the efforts of the young singer, appears to have made a very favourable impression.

Intoxicated with his success, Saint-Huberty determined to extend the scope of his operations and establish his troupe on a permanent basis. With this end in view, he started for Hamburg, “in search of suitable recruits,” after which he had the imprudence to visit Berlin. It was to venture into the lion’s den. Scarcely had he set foot in the town, than he was recognised, arrested, and thrown into prison, where his creditors announced their intention of keeping him until he should have paid the uttermost pfenning.

The troupe which he had left at Warsaw, deprived of its director and its salaries, for we may presume that M. Saint-Huberty had taken most of its available cash with him, found itself in a parlous condition. In the meantime, however, Antoinette had scored a great personal triumph in the opera of Zémire et Azor, when the reception she met with must have exceeded her fondest anticipations. Warsaw, in those days, was essentially a city of pleasure; and its upper classes prided themselves on following the manners and modes of Paris. The Opera was especially high in favour, and, as the public was not very discriminating and lavishly generous to those who earned its approbation, artistes of very mediocre talent, who in Paris would have been accounted fortunate to be received in nothing worse than silence, found themselves lauded to the skies and loaded with gifts. The enthusiasm evoked by Madame Saint-Huberty’s singing found vent in numerous valuable presents being made to the artiste, who was thus enabled to realise a sum of 12,000 livres, wherewith she proceeded to release her worthless husband from his Prussian dungeon. That gentleman, accordingly, returned to Warsaw; but his creditors in the Polish capital, encouraged by the success which had attended the proceedings of their fellow victims in Berlin, assumed so threatening an attitude that, after a brief period of repose, he judged it expedient to resume his travels, and, one fine night, suddenly disappeared.

According to his custom, M. Saint-Huberty did not depart with empty hands. This time he had carried off not only all his wife’s ready money, but even the contents of her wardrobe, including the costumes which she wore upon the stage, leaving her without resources and almost without clothes. Happily, a wealthy and generous Polish lady, the Princess Lubomirska, took compassion upon the unfortunate actress, refurnished her wardrobe, and gave her shelter for three months in her own palace.

Soon, however, difficulties arose with her husband’s numerous creditors, who endeavoured to fix upon her the responsibility for the debts which the fugitive impresario had contracted; and, in order to free herself from all responsibility in connection with his liabilities, Madame Saint-Huberty was obliged to obtain from the authorities at Warsaw a formal separation, in regard to property. And here is the declaration which she made on this occasion, bearing date March 17, 1777:

“Before the notaries and public officers of the ancient town of Warsaw, appearing in person, the noble dame Antoinette de Clavel, wife of the nobleman Philippe de Saint-Huberty, assisted for the present deed by the counsel of the nobleman Georges Godin, present and called by her to this effect: The said Antoinette de Clavel, being of sound mind and body, of her own full accord has freely and expressly declared and does declare by the present act: that having learned that the nobleman Philippe de Saint-Huberty, her husband, had quitted Warsaw, on account of the great number of debts by which he was overwhelmed, and being ignorant even of the place to which he had retired, and unwilling to be bound in any manner by the debts of her husband, which he had contracted without any participation on her part, she separates herself from all the goods and property generally of her said husband, excepting, nevertheless, the goods which she has acquired and brought with her; and the said dame de Clavel declares, moreover, by a formal declaration, that she makes no claim whatever to the said property, and approving entirely of the present separation from the goods of her husband, she has signed the present deed with her own hand.—Antoinette de Clavel, by marriage Saint-Huberty, J. Godin, as witness.”[171]

In the meanwhile, the “nobleman” referred to in the aforegoing document had settled in Vienna, from which city he wrote to his wife, to inform her that he had arranged to open an opera-house, which he was confident would be the means of assuring him an ample fortune, and to urge her to join him without delay. As may be supposed, after her sad experiences, the poor lady was inclined to regard these assurances with some suspicion; and, on the advice of the Princess Lubomirska, she, for some time, declined to leave Warsaw. But Saint-Huberty pleaded so eloquently in the letters which he continued to send her that ultimately she relented, and, in spite of the remonstrances of her kind-hearted patroness, took the road to Vienna.

Here she quickly found that the opera-house and the brilliant prospects had no existence, save in the imagination of M. Saint-Huberty, who was reduced to such straits as to be actually in want of bread, and had only sent for his wife in order to save himself from starvation. Happily, almost so soon as she arrived, circumstances compelled the impresario to quit Vienna in the same manner as he had quitted Berlin and Warsaw.

The young singer now found herself without an engagement, and free to go wherever she might choose. Like almost every operatic artiste, her thoughts had often turned towards the Académie Royale de Musique, where Gluck was now supreme, and she, accordingly, solicited an ordre de début. This was easily obtained, the Opera being just at that time sorely in need of fresh talent to fittingly interpret the master’s works, and, in April 1777, she set out for Paris. Arrived in the French capital, she lost no time in obtaining an introduction to the great composer, who, quick to recognise ability wherever he found it, promised to give her lessons himself,[172] and recommended her for a part in his forthcoming opera.

On September 23, 1777, Madame Saint-Huberty made her début in the small part of Mélisse, in Armide, and the Mercure de France referred to her performance in the following terms:

“She has an agreeable voice. She sings and acts with much delicacy of expression. She appears to be an excellent musician, and needs only a little stage experience in order to acquire greater development for her voice and greater ease for her acting.”

In spite of this encouraging notice,[173] the newcomer appears to have attracted but little attention, in the midst of an event of such importance as a new work by Gluck. Who, after all, was this modest débutante, beside such stars as Legros, Larrivée, Gélin, Rosalie Levasseur, and Mlle. Duranceray?

On first arriving in Paris, Madame Saint-Huberty had lodged in the Rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie, at the house of a dame Sorel, after which we find her residing successively at the Hôtel de Genève, the Hôtel de Bayonne, and the Hôtel des Treize-Provinces.[174] At all these places she lived alone, for, though her worthless husband had followed her to Paris, she very prudently refused to receive him back, until she was assured that he had mended his ways. As, however, he had no means of livelihood, and she could not allow him to starve, she obtained for him, through the good offices of Gluck, the post of wardrobe-keeper at the Opera, which, as one of her biographers very sensibly remarks, was scarcely a proper appointment for a gentleman with a weakness for carrying off other people’s garments and raising money upon them. M. Saint-Huberty was, as a matter of fact, very speedily discharged, upon which he revenged himself by hawking about the streets and “reading aloud in the cafés and even in certain private houses to which he was admitted,” a libellous pamphlet against the authorities of the Opera, composed by a confederate named Dodé de Jousserand. In order to keep himself in funds, he paid frequent visits to his unhappy wife, from whom he did not hesitate, when argument failed, to extort money by threats and even blows; while, when she had nothing to give him, he would seize upon any saleable article which happened to catch his eye, and carry it off. One day, while Madame Saint-Huberty was at the theatre, he swooped down and made a clear sweep of all the portable property of the luckless singer, who was compelled to lay a complaint against him before the commissary of police of her quarter. Here is the text of this document:

“In the year seventeen hundred and seventy-eight, Friday, the thirty-first of July, at nine o’clock of the evening, in the hôtel, and before us Joseph Chesnon fils, advocate to the Parliament, counsellor of the King, commissary to the Châlelet of Paris, appeared demoiselle Anne Antoinette Clavel, called Saint-Huberty, King’s pensioner at the Opera, who informed us that the sieur de Saint-Huberty, who claims to be married to her, in virtue of a pretended act of celebration in Berlin, has abused the confidence of the complainant for nearly three years, in order to install himself in her abode and to remain there in spite of her; to make himself master there, and even to maltreat her. He, nevertheless, several times left the house, but always carried away with him jewels and other property of the complainant, which he pledged and sold. He would again force his way in, but with empty hands, and the complainant was unable to do anything against such persecution, being without her papers.[175] Finally, this same day, while she was at the Opera, the sieur Saint-Huberty has again taken advantage of her confidence and her absence to carry off the goods, papers, and music of the complainant, including even music which belongs to the Opera.

“She finds herself in the greatest embarrassment, and the sieur Saint-Huberty is cunning enough to ask her, by a letter, dated Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of this month, for papers and goods which he has already taken the precaution to carry off. For which reasons, and in order that she may enjoy peace at home, of which the sieur Saint-Huberty has for a long time deprived her, and to force the said Saint-Huberty to restore to her her property, papers, and music, and, in particular, that which belongs to the Opera, she has come to lodge the present plaint against the sieur Saint-Huberty, requiring from us the act which we have given her and signing the minute in our presence.”[176]

On an order from the Lieutenant of Police, a portion of the stolen property was subsequently restored; but if Madame Saint-Huberty flattered herself that she was safe from further depredations, she was speedily undeceived. On August 10, she removed to a little apartment in the Rue de l’Arbre Sec, in the house of Gourdan, one of the King’s valets-de-chambre, for which she paid a rental of 490 livres and had furnished herself. Three weeks later, at seven o’clock in the morning, she was sleeping peacefully, dreaming perhaps of the time not far distant when all the musical world would be at her feet, when she was abruptly awakened by the entrance of four men, amongst whom she at once recognised the scoundrelly Saint-Huberty. That worthy, pointing to a person attired in the black garb of a commissary of police, to indicate that he had legal authority for what he was about to do, cried: “The pockets, Messieurs; search her pockets.” The hapless woman was then dragged from her bed, and, while the man in black held her in his arms, her husband showered blows upon her, after which he took a pair of scissors and cut the ribands of the pockets of her night-dress, inflicting several severe scratches in the process. Next, having possessed himself of her keys, he opened all the drawers and cupboards in the apartment, and proceeded to ransack them, at the same time addressing to his wife the most shocking language. Finally, a fifth person, also clad in black, entered, who announced himself as the procurator of the husband, but, like his fellows, only laughed at the poor actress’s distress, and declined to answer when she demanded to see his authority. When her husband and his confederates had taken their departure, Madame Saint-Huberty found that she had been robbed of a packet of twenty-two letters, “which, at first sight, appeared to be love-letters,” and a pair of diamond shoe-buckles of the value of six louis.

This outrage was, of course, made the subject of a complaint by its victim, of which the aforegoing account is a summary. But, as Saint-Huberty had really had legal authority for his proceedings, having had the audacity to declare to the police that his wife had “secretly quitted their common abode and carried away with her numerous effects belonging to him,” no steps could be taken against him. When, however, Madame Saint-Huberty threatened to retire from the Opera, “unless her personal safety were guaranteed,” she received an assurance that she need no longer fear the visits and assaults of her husband.

But, if the unhappy woman had contrived to secure herself against personal molestation, she was not yet free from trouble of another kind. Some weeks before the adventure which we have just related, she had succeeded in obtaining from Saint-Huberty, in return, we may be sure, for some pecuniary consideration, a formal renunciation of all claim to her professional earnings, whether derived from the Opera or from engagements at private concerts or other entertainments. By the law, however, she still remained answerable for his debts, and the cunning scoundrel now determined to obtain the money he required through the claims of fictitious creditors. On the demand of a certain demoiselle Guérin, who declared herself to be a creditor for the sum of 489 francs against the sieur Saint-Huberty and his wife, a formal objection was lodged to the payment of the dame Saint-Huberty’s salary; and, on October 2, 1778, the Châtelet declared this opposition good and valid, and made an order for the directors and treasurers of the Opera to deliver over to the sieur Saint-Huberty all sums due to his wife, until the debt should be liquidated.

Poor Madame Saint-Huberty was in despair. It was in vain that she protested that she knew nothing of the demoiselle Guérin, and had never been called upon by her, previous to the legal proceedings, to pay any debt. The officials of the Opera assured her that they were powerless in the matter. Deeply as they sympathised with her, they could pay her nothing, until she had obtained a recession of the order of the court.

This she, accordingly, endeavoured to procure. But the machinery of the law worked even more slowly in those days than at the present time, and it was not until March 19, 1779, that the appeal came on for hearing before the Parliament of Paris. Then, at last, Fortune declared itself on her side; for the judges, carried away apparently by the eloquence of the plaintiff’s advocate, Maître Mascassies, who, in a speech of several hours’ duration, traced the history of the stage from its origin to the middle of the eighteenth century, with special reference to the influence of the fall of Constantinople on the “Mysteries,” and the relative merits of the operas of Lulli and Rameau, reversed the decision of the Châtelet, ordered the authorities of the Opera to hand over to the singer her arrears of salary, and condemned Saint-Huberty and his confederates to pay all the costs of the proceedings.

Madame Saint-Huberty followed up this victory by another and more important one. Six months later, she instituted proceedings for a formal dissolution of her marriage on the following grounds:

(1) Omission of the publication of the banns in the parish of the father and mother of the bride.

(2) Absence of the curé of the bride’s parish.

(3) The fact that the marriage had been performed without the consent of the bride’s parents.

(4) Rape and seduction, which, without the employment of force, but merely “par mauvaises voyes et mauvaises artifices,” were held to be sufficient to invalidate a marriage.

The action was supported by Saint-Huberty’s father, the Metz merchant, an honest man, who appears to have been genuinely distressed by the misery which his son had brought upon this unfortunate girl; and, the husband himself having been induced to leave the matter to “the wisdom of the court,” on January 30, 1781, the marriage was finally annulled.[177]

Meanwhile, undeterred by her domestic troubles—troubles which might well have ruined the career of a less resolute and less courageous woman—Madame Saint-Huberty had been steadily working her way into the very front rank of her profession. Without friends, without a protector, but proud in her distress and sustained by an all-devouring ambition, she lived alone in her humble lodging, which she never left, save to go to the theatre for rehearsals and performances. “From morning till night she worked, studied, practised unceasingly. In time, her voice became more supple and perfectly under her control. She taught herself to move her long, thin arms with grace; she accustomed her countenance to reflect her passionate sensibility, to render her lively impressions. Finally, she got rid of her deplorable Alsatian accent.”[178]

Recognition, however, was slow to come. In 1778, the Mercure only mentions her as singing in unimportant parts in three or four operas, although she appears to have greatly pleased the musical critic of that journal by her rendering of an Italian arietta of Gluck, at a “concert spirituel” in December. During the whole of the following year, when the theatre was under the direction of Devismes, there is no reference to her whatever, except in a letter of Devismes’s successor, Dauvergne, in which he speaks of the young singer as weeping with despair, because she had not been allotted a part; and she seems, about this time, to have had serious thoughts of leaving the Opera altogether.[179] However, her perseverance was not wasted, for, towards the end of that year, she was received as a permanent member of the company, though less, it is believed, on account of her talent, than her willingness to do whatever was required of her. This was a great step gained, and, at length, in November 1780, she reaped the reward of all her labours and self-denial by being entrusted with the part of Angélique in the Roland (Orlando) of Piccini.

No one seems to have expected this opera to succeed. The composer himself believed its failure inevitable. The evening of the first representation, when he was about to start for the theatre, his family refused to accompany him, and, aware of his extremely sensitive nature used every persuasion to induce him to remain at home. His wife, his children, his friends were in tears. “One would have imagined that he was on his way to the scaffold.”

Piccini endeavoured to reassure them. “My children,” said he, “we are not in the midst of barbarians, but of the politest people in the world. If they do not approve of me as a musician, they will at least respect me as a man and a foreigner.” And he tore himself away.

A delightful surprise awaited him. Roland, so far from being a failure, was an unqualified triumph, and, at the conclusion of the performance, Piccini was escorted home by an enthusiastic crowd of admirers. This happy result was undoubtedly due, in the first instance, to Madame Saint-Huberty’s admirable rendering of the part of Angélique. “Where is Saint-Huberty? where is she?” cried the grateful composer, as the curtain fell to the accompaniment of round upon round of applause. “I wish to see her, to embrace her, to thank her, to tell her that I owe to her my success!”

The critic of the Mercure expresses himself as follows on the acting and singing of Madame Saint-Huberty in this her first important part:

“Having spoken of Roland, we shall seize this opportunity to say something of Madame Saint-Huberty, whose progress, every day more marked, merits a special mention. We have seen her with pleasure in the rôle of Angélique, in which she has, in many respects, acquitted herself very well. We invite her only to be careful of her articulation; she neglects it so far as to cause us to lose part of what she says. The fault is common to foreign singers or to those trained abroad.”

And the critic concludes by recommending her to be less prodigal of her gestures and not to raise her arms higher than was necessary.[180]

A month later, the singer gained another success, as Lise, in Le Seigneur bienfaisant, an indifferent work by Rochon de Chabannes and Floquet, when she rendered with such fiery energy the despair of the heroine that she fell ill from excess of emotion and was absent from the theatre for several weeks.

On her return, fresh triumphs awaited her. After successfully impersonating Églé, in the Thésée of Quinault, which had been set to music by Gossec, she replaced Rosalie Levasseur in the name-part in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (March 10, 1782),[181] in which, the Mercure declares that “she acquitted herself very well and deserved the praise which she received.” Next, she created the rôle of Laurette, in l’Inconnue persécutée, “with as much taste as intelligence,” and made an heroic, though unsuccessful, attempt to secure a favourable reception for the Électre of her old master Lemoine, the one-time conductor of the Strasburg orchestra.

Not content with doing her utmost on the stage on her old friend’s behalf, Madame Saint-Huberty employed the influence she was beginning to possess in the coulisses to compel the administration of the Opera to prolong the run of this very indifferent work, notwithstanding the unfavourable verdict of the public and the disastrous results such a course was likely to have upon the receipts. The administration resolved not to yield to such a preposterous demand, but, at the same time, unwilling to offend an actress who was becoming every day more necessary to them, had recourse to stratagem. They represented that they were perfectly willing to oblige Madame Saint-Huberty by continuing the representations of Électre; but, since the opera was not in itself a sufficient attraction to secure a full house, it would be advisable to wait for a few days, until the ever-popular ballet of Ninette à la Cour, in which Mlle. Guimard, it will be remembered, secured one of her greatest triumphs, could be given with it. Madame Saint-Huberty consented to the postponement, and the administration made use of the respite granted them to induce the Minister of the King’s Household, the supreme authority in matters concerning the Opera, “to order that the opera of Électre should be absolutely withdrawn from the theatre.”[182]

In those days, it was the fashion at the Opera to frequently present entire pieces composed of acts extracted from various works. These performances, called “Fragments,” were very popular with the patrons of the theatre, since they constituted but little strain upon the imagination, while the variety of their subjects and music provided an agreeable change. On September 24, 1782, four “fragments” were performed at the Opera, the most important of which was a new act by Moline and Edelmann, entitled Ariane dans l’Île de Naxos. Madame Saint-Huberty, who played the part of Ariane, had always had a strong predilection in favour of historical accuracy in stage costume, and, on the advice of the painter Moreau, who held similar views and had designed the dresses for this opera, she resolved to make a move in the direction of reform.

“We have seen, for the first time, on the stage,” says the Journal de Paris, “in the principal personage, the costume rigorously observed. These designs have been made on the advice of M. Moreau le jeune, favourably known in artistic circles by the number, the variety, and the continual beauty of his works.”

Levacher de Chamois, in his work on theatrical costume, has traced a description of the costume worn by Madame Saint-Huberty on this occasion:

“One saw this actress appear habited in a long linen tunic, fastened beneath the bosom; the legs bare and fitted with the ancient buskin. From the head descended gracefully several plaits of hair, which played about her shoulders. This costume, a novel one for the spectators and both true and elegant, was applauded with a kind of frenzy. But, in spite of the approval of the public, there arrived orders which one called ‘ministerial,’ forbidding Madame Saint-Huberty to appear in this beautiful costume, and at the second representation of the work she was obliged to resume the heavy and ridiculous accoutrements of our coquettes and prudes.”[183]

Notwithstanding this mortification, the actress had no reason to be dissatisfied with her performance of Ariane. It was indeed, for her, a veritable triumph. “As for Madame Saint-Huberty,” says the Journal de Paris, “we do not know which serves her the best, her face, her voice, or her acting; she knows how to give to each song inflections which occasion the most lively emotions.” And the musical critic of the Mercure writes: “Madame Saint-Huberty, in the opera of Ariane, has added yet further to the idea that one has always entertained of her intelligence and her talent. She played in a manner always animated and interesting, and sang with the greatest expression the music constantly loud and passionate of a long and difficult rôle.”

Guinguéné, in his notice on the life and works of Piccini, declares that Madame Saint-Huberty owed to the protection of the celebrated composer the fact that her name was not erased from the books of the Opera after her brilliant rendering of the part of Ariane, since she had shown on this occasion views too independent and a talent too original to suit the views of the authorities of that institution. “The success which she had obtained in it excited the petty passions of the coulisses. They were prepared to drive her from the Opera, and Piccini alone sustained her. He recalled to those who were the powers of the State the witty and sensible mot of Gluck; he predicted that they would speedily have need of her, and that they would be only too happy to have her. His selection of her for the interesting part of Sangarede and the superior manner in which she rendered not only the music, but the scenes as well, moved the entire public in her favour and gave her a settled position on the stage of which she was for ten years the glory.”[184]

The revival of Atys had taken place at the beginning of the year 1783, when Madame Saint-Huberty played the heroine with an enthusiasm which gave a new lease of life to that fine opera. “Thus,” says M. Jullien, “she found herself dividing her sympathies between the two hostile camps, and lending, in turn, the assistance of her great talent to the two rival composers: to Gluck, who had given her her first opportunity at the Opera, to Piccini, who had helped her to retain her position there.”[185]

MADAME SAINT-HUBERTY From an engraving by Colinet after the drawing by Le Moine
MADAME SAINT-HUBERTY
From an engraving by Colinet after the drawing by Le Moine

A little time before, on November 27, 1782, the actress had given proof of a talent of rare versatility by rendering with much gaiety and charm the part of Rosette, in Grétry’s l’Embarras des Richesses.[186] This piece, notwithstanding some delightful music and Madame Saint-Huberty’s successful impersonation of the heroine, failed, mainly through the ineptitude of the libretto—the production of one Lourdet de Sans-Terre, surnamed by the wits Lourdeau Sans-Tête—which contained some of the most amazing anachronisms ever perpetrated by a presumably educated writer. Thus, the inhabitants of Athens, in the time of Pericles, are made to fast during Lent, flirt with opera-girls, and pay their debts in louis d’or; while, in the ballet, dances are executed by American savages! Bad though it was, however, l’Embarras des Richesses is still remembered, having been rescued from well-merited oblivion by the following amusing epigram: