and I like him. It may have been imprudent to take him, but, since I have done so, I shall keep him.’

“I do not recollect the remainder of the conversation, but I have an idea that it was as dishonourable on the part of the president’s wife as honourable on the part of the actress.”[18]

If Lauraguais really was so generous a protector as the police-reports and those writers who accept them would have us believe, it is certainly rather surprising to find on November 13, 1759, when the count’s passion for his mistress was undoubtedly at a very high temperature, the sieur Jean Baptiste Delamarre, tipstaff to the Châtelet de Paris, acting on behalf of the sieur Jean Baptiste Desper, perruquier, requiring the attendance of a commissary of police to witness an execution upon the goods of the demoiselle Madeleine Sophie Arnould, residing on the first floor of a house in the Rue de Richelieu. The said demoiselle, it appeared, had, twelve months before, taken the apartment in question, on a lease for three, six, or nine years, at an annual rental of 2400 livres; but the perruquier had not as yet seen any part of that sum. The goods seized were left in the charge of one Chevalier, fruiterer of the Rue Traversière, parish of Saint-Roch, from whom, we may presume, Sophie or Lauraguais subsequently redeemed them.[19]

After her elopement with the Comte de Lauraguais, Sophie became more than ever the idol of the public, and, for the next few years, might without exaggeration have parodied the famous mot of le Grand Monarque and exclaimed: “L’Opéra, c’est moi!” Never, declared both public and critics, had the heroines of lyrical tragedy: the Psychés, the Proserpines, the Thisbés, the Iphises, and the Cléopâtres, found so worthy a representative, and, no matter how insipid the opera which related the story of their woes might happen to be, the young singer was always sure of an enthusiastic reception. The patrons of the Palais-Royal seemed indeed as if they could not have enough of her; the directors, who owed to her popularity their increased receipts, were at her feet; every one adored her, or pretended to do so, and every one trembled before her epigrams.

For side by side with her reputation as a singer and actress, Sophie was building up another reputation, and one which was to endure long after her stage triumphs had been forgotten: that of a diseur de bons mots, and of bons mots of a peculiarly caustic kind. Few indeed were the wits of her time—and they were plentiful enough in the eighteenth century—who cared to cross swords with her, and such was the dread which her sharp tongue inspired that people imagined they detected a sarcasm lurking even in her most innocent remark, as the following incident will show.

It was the custom of the Royal Family of France to dine in public (au grand couvert) on certain days of the week, and any respectably dressed person was permitted to view his Most Christian King partaking of his soup or his venison. In the days of Louis XIV., who, if his sister-in-law, the Princess Palatine, is to be believed, was in the habit of disposing at a single meal of as much as would suffice an ordinary person for at least three,[20] a dinner au grand couvert must have been a spectacle worth going a long way to see; but as “the Well-Beloved” had no pretensions to emulate the gastronomic feats of his predecessor, the ceremony was now shorn of much of its former interest. Sophie, who had never yet enjoyed a near view of her sovereign, expressed one day a desire to attend one of these dinners, and a noble admirer, accordingly, conducted her to Versailles and into the Salon de Grand Couvert, where he placed her exactly opposite the King. His Majesty was in the act of raising his glass to his lips when he caught her eye. At the same moment Sophie remarked, half-involuntarily, to her companion: “The King drinks!” Louis, who had heard much of the young lady’s biting wit, was apparently under the impression that these simple words were intended as a covert jest at his expense, and became so embarrassed that every one present noticed it. Finally, he motioned to Sophie to withdraw, which she did, reflecting that a reputation as a wit sometimes has its drawbacks.

To appreciate the witticisms of Sophie Arnould as they deserve, they must be read in the language in which they were uttered, for, when translated, the point of many of them—plays upon names and so forth—is lost. Not a few, too, of her most pungent sayings will scarcely bear reproduction in a modern work, for her wit was essentially the wit of the coulisses, whose frequenters were seldom at any pains to curb their tongues, even in the presence of the highest in the land. Fortunately, however, there still remain a considerable number of mots which may be rendered into English with tolerable fidelity and without injuring the susceptibilities of even the most fastidious of readers.

Sophie was an inveterate punster, a form of wit more appreciated in the eighteenth century than it is to-day. Here is one, however, which most of us will find it hard not to forgive.

The Duc de Bouillon became so enamoured of the charms of a young singer named Mlle. Laguerre that, in the course of three months, he was reported to have squandered upon her no less a sum than 800,000 livres. This prodigality greatly exasperated the creditors of the duke, who complained to the King himself, with the result that the infatuated nobleman received orders to retire to his country-seat. A few days later, some one, meeting Sophie, happened to inquire after the health of Mlle. Laguerre. “I do not know how she is at present,” was the reply; “but for the last month the poor child has been living entirely on soup (bouillon).”

This same Mlle. Laguerre created the principal rôle in Piccini’s Iphigénie en Tauride, produced on January 22, 1781. At the first performance she sang admirably and contributed largely to the enthusiastic reception it received; but on the second evening her efforts were but too obviously inspired by wine. “Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Sophie. “This is not Iphigenia in Tauris; it is Iphigenia in Champagne!”

Mlle. Laguerre was only one among many of Sophie’s colleagues to suffer from the sharpness of that lady’s tongue. She was particularly severe upon the famous danseuse Mlle. Guimard, the subject of our next sketch, whose many wealthy conquests would appear to have excited her jealousy. Mlle. Guimard, though the very embodiment of grace and elegance upon the stage, was slender almost to attenuation, and Sophie dubbed her “la squelette des Grâces.” Seeing her one evening performing a pas de trois with two male dancers, she declared that it put her in mind of a couple of dogs quarrelling over a bone. On another occasion, when the danseuse’s well-known liaison with Jarente, Bishop of Orléans, the holder of the feuille of benefices, happened to be the subject of conversation, she remarked: “I cannot conceive why that little silk-worm is so thin; she lives upon such a good leaf (feuille).”

Another butt of her sarcasm was Mlle.