all the resources of Art.”

At the beginning of the New Year, Sophie appeared in a second piece, called La Provençale, in which she confirmed the favourable impression she had created in Les Amours des Dieux. “Mlle. Arnould,” says the Mercure, “sang the Provençale with the ingenuous charm of her age. In this rôle she had only one important song. It is the monologue (‘Mer paisible’...), into which she threw all the expression that it demanded. The crowded houses which have followed it up to Lent are proofs of the pleasure which she gives the public.”

In the following April the young actress reaped the reward of her success by receiving her first important part, that of Venus in Énée et Lavinie, a tragic opera in five acts by Fontenelle, music by Dauvergne.[7] The confidence reposed in her was not misplaced, and she received as much applause as she had previously obtained in ariettas and pastorals. Such was her success indeed that she was speedily promoted to the principal rôle, and the admiring critic of the Mercure, who had already spoken in high terms of the new singer’s rendering of Venus, consecrated to her the following article:

“On Tuesday, April 13, Mlle. Arnould played the rôle of Lavinie for the first time. Her success was complete. The tragic indeed seems to be the genre most suited to her. It is, at any rate, that in which she has appeared to most advantage. Her gestures are noble without arrogance and expressive without grimaces. Her acting is vivacious and animated, and yet never departs from the natural. This excellent actress has already partially corrected herself of a kind of slowness, which is only suitable to the arietta. Bad examples had led her astray. We invite her to pay heed to no one but herself, if she wishes to approach nearer and nearer to perfection.”

“So great a success renders it almost needless for us to observe that Mlle. Arnould has retained this rôle; that she has brought back the public to the Opera; finally, that she has adorned Énée et Lavinie with an appearance of novelty.”

Some months later the Mercure returns to the subject of Énée et Lavinie, and observes that Mlle. Arnould played the latter part “with that intelligence, that dignity, those natural and touching graces which enchant the public.” “Happily,” continues the critic, “she has depended upon her own impulses before allowing herself to be intimidated by all the little prejudices of the art. Model as a débutante, she reanimates the lyric stage and appears to communicate her soul to those who have the modesty and the talent to imitate her.”

Towards the end of June of that year, Sophie created a trio of small parts in an opera-ballet in three acts, entitled Les Fêtes de Paphos.[8] Collé, that most exacting of critics, is very severe on this piece, but, at the same time, has nothing but praise for Sophie, who appears to have covered herself with glory. “At the first representation,” he writes, “the music of this ballet was thought pitiable, and it would not have survived six, if it had not been for a young actress who made her first appearance this winter, and who, in four months, has become the queen of the theatre. Never have I seen combined in the same actress more grace, more truth of sentiment, dignity of expression, intelligence, and fire. Never have I seen grief more charmingly expressed. She can depict the deepest horror without her countenance losing one feature of its beauty. She would be twice as great an actress as Mlle. Le Maure,[9] if she only possessed two-thirds of her voice, and Mlle. Le Maure will always be regarded as a great artiste. I speak of Mlle. Sophie Arnould, who is not yet nineteen years old.”[10]

The voice of Sophie Arnould was very far from being a powerful one. “Nature,” she says in her Mémoires, “had seconded this taste [the taste for music] with a tolerably agreeable voice, weak but sonorous, though not extremely so. But it was sound and well-balanced, so that, with a clear pronunciation and without any defect save a slight lisp, which could hardly be considered a fault, not a word of what I sang was lost, even in the most spacious buildings.”

She might have added, without fear of contradiction, that her voice was infinitely sweet and that she possessed the gift of imparting to it wonderful pathos and expression. “She brought to harmony, emotion, to the song, compassion, to the play of the voice, sentiment. She charmed the ear and touched the heart. All the domain of the tender drama, all the graces of terror, were hers. She possessed the cry, and the tears, and the sigh, and the caresses of the pathetic.... What art, what genius, must there have been to wrest so many harmonies from a contemptible voice, a feeble throat.”[11]

Another important factor in Sophie’s success is to be found in the fact that she was not only a great singer, but an accomplished actress, which great singers rarely are. When Madame Arnould had found that she had no alternative but to allow her daughter to enter the Opera, she had, like a sensible woman, decided that, since to the Opera Sophie must go, nothing which could possibly make for her success in her profession should be neglected, and had sent her to take lessons in singing from Mlle. Fel, and in acting from Mlle. Clairon. The girl had not failed to benefit by the teaching of the famous tragédienne, and her command of facial expression and the dignity and grace of her movements would have reflected credit on a veteran member of the Comédie-Française, while for a débutante of the lyric stage they were little short of extraordinary.

And yet, with all her vocal and histrionic talents, it may be doubted whether Sophie would so speedily have attained the dazzling position in the estimation of both the public and the critics which was now hers, had she not been fortunate enough to possess physical attractions of a high order. If we are to judge of her appearance solely by her portraits by La Tour and Greuze, she must have been a very pretty woman. In the former, which the excellent engraving by Bourgeois de la Richardière has helped to popularise, Sophie is depicted at the moment when she is about to sing. Her lips are parted; her eyes, fine and full of expression, and surmounted by arched eyebrows, are turned imploringly heavenward; while her face, which is oval in shape, with small and regular features, wears a look at once charming and pathetic. In the Greuze portrait—now in the Wallace Collection at Hertford House—the actress is dressed in white, with a large black hat decorated with a white plume. Her elbow rests on a chair, her chin on the back of her hand; her expression is nonchalant and slightly ennuyé.

These portraits, as we have already remarked, are