Old and New Paris Part 21

Corneille in any case endeavoured to persuade Mdlle. du Parc to pa.s.s from Moliere's company to his own, pointing out to her that the troop of his friend Moliere "was very inferior in tragedy, so that she would always be sacrificed, since she excelled above all in the tragic style."

Racine employed the same kind of argument as Corneille, and ultimately succeeded in taking away the much-admired actress from Moliere's company in order to attach her to his theatre of the Hotel de Bourgogne, where tragedies from his pen were habitually produced. Mdlle. du Parc, who had previously caused an estrangement between Corneille and Moliere, now brought about a complete rupture between Moliere and Racine.

The story of Mdlle. du Parc, with the intrigues of which she was made the object, brings out clearly the fact that in the early days of the French stage there was not one theatre, but three; Corneille, Moliere, and Racine having each his separate company. In the present day the Theatre Francais comprises in its repertory all the masterpieces of France's three greatest dramatists; and many imagine that for this famous establishment may be claimed the honour of having first produced them. But the finest tragedies and comedies that France possesses were written for theatres of little or no standing; and not, as just pointed out, for one, but for three different theatres. An actress celebrated in her time, Mdlle. Beaupre, made some celebrated remarks on the subject of French dramatic literature, which give a good idea of the esteem in which the art of playwriting must have been held in France immediately before the advent of Moliere. "M. de Corneille," she said, "has done the greatest harm to the dramatic profession. Before his time we had very good pieces which were written for us in a night for three crowns. Now M. de Corneille charges large sums for his plays and we earn scarcely anything."

Even in these early days Louis XIV. took the greatest interest in theatrical representations, especially those given by Moliere's company.

Perhaps the very best period of the French stage was between the years 1645, when Moliere abandoned the law courts to join a troop of wandering players, and 1680, when the two most important companies of the day were combined; at which time Moliere had been dead seven years, while Corneille was on the point of dying.

The Comedie Francaise was formed in the most arbitrary manner. It has been said that the company which had been in the habit of playing at the Hotel de Bourgogne was joined to that of the Theatre Guenegaud in the Rue Mazarin. But there was at that day a third theatre in Paris, the Theatre du Marais; and in order that everything dramatic might be concentrated at the one establishment, this unhappy house was simply suppressed. By Royal decree the number of actors and actresses connected with the Comedie Francaise was fixed at twenty-seven. A year later the establishment received for the first time an annual subvention, to the amount of 12,000 livres or francs. At the same time the French comedians were authorised, in lieu of previous arrangements, to deduct the full expenses of the theatre before paying anything to the authors.

The company had scarcely taken possession of the Theatre de Guenegaud when they were obliged to leave it for another and more commodious building in the Rue des Fosses, Saint-Germain-des-Pres; and it was here that the name of Comedie Francaise was first adopted. Hence the name of the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, in which street, newly baptised, the Comedie Francaise was for so many years installed.

The Comedie Francaise had everything to itself until the year 1699, when much alarm and indignation was caused in the ranks of the company by the establishment of an opposition theatre, the Comedie Italienne.

The French comedians were ready to do anything in order to keep their monopoly. In a formal pet.i.tion they represented to the king that they were twenty-six in number (the princ.i.p.al actress had died) and capable, if necessary, of amusing His Majesty at two different theatres. They thought it hard, however, that after quitting, by His Majesty's orders, first the Hotel de Bourgogne, then the Theatre Guenegaud, they should now be threatened in their new abode, which had cost them 200,000 francs to construct.

The king paid no attention to these representations, and the Comedie Italienne soon became the home of French comic opera, doing a flouris.h.i.+ng business according to the tariff of those days, when a place in the pit cost five sous, and a seat in the boxes ten.

The Comedie Francaise did not in the long run suffer from the popularity of the opposition theatre, and perhaps profited by it. But soon the Comedie Francaise was to be subjected to a new inconvenience, and in the very year which had witnessed the invasion of the Comedie Italienne a tax was imposed on theatres generally for the benefit of the poor--"_taxe des pauvres_"--which exists even to the present day. The members of the Comedie Francaise endeavoured to meet the difficulty by raising the prices on the occasion of first representations.

After the death of Louis XIV. the Comedie Francaise remained, as before, under the supreme government of the king, his ministers, and the gentlemen of the chamber. The new sovereign showed himself as munificent in the matter of the subvention as his predecessor, and the theatre was once more guaranteed an annual grant of 12,000 francs. A custom was now for the first time introduced, which has since become universal--that of playing a first piece in one act before the princ.i.p.al play of the evening.

Under Louis XV. the Comedie Francaise was directed, in the matter of engagements and general administration, by the Duc de Richelieu, to whom were submitted the pet.i.tions intended for the king. The members of the Comedie Francaise kept a careful watch over the privileges conferred upon them, and we find them complaining whenever there are any signs of these privileges being interfered with by a rival establishment. Every booth opened at a temporary fair excited the suspicion of the comedians; and they at last succeeded in procuring an order by which the directors of the much-hated Comedie Italienne, now known as the Opera Comique, were prevented from playing comedies, especially those which had been written expressly for the Comedie Francaise.

In 1770 the famous company again changed their domicile, and, by the king's special permission, took possession of the theatre built in 1671 at the palace of the Tuileries. Here they remained twelve years, until 1782, when they left the palace of the kings of France and installed themselves in the house afterwards to become known as the Odeon, on the left bank of the Seine, close to the Luxemburg Palace. According to Freron, the daring satirist who was in no way afraid to take even Voltaire for his mark, the dramatic literature of France had now fallen to a very low point, by reason of the worldly success of its authors.

"The gay life of most of our authors helps," wrote Freron, "to keep them within the bounds of mediocrity. Love of pleasure, the attractions of society that luxury which had so long kept them at a respectful distance, now enervate their souls. They are men of society, men of fas.h.i.+on, runners after women, and themselves much run after. They are at every party, every entertainment; no supper is complete without them; they are sumptuously dressed, and have luxuriously furnished rooms. It was not by supping out every night in society that the Corneilles, the Molieres, the La Fontaines, and the Boileaus composed those masterpieces which will const.i.tute for ever their glory and the glory of France. They were simply lodged and simply clothed; a large flat cap covered the sublime head of the great Corneille, but all the a.s.sembly rose before him when he made his appearance at the play." Since the days of Freron the incomes and the luxury of French dramatic authors have greatly increased; a result mainly due to the exertions of Beaumarchais, whose _Marriage of Figaro_ was produced at the Comedie Francaise two years after its installation at the Odeon in 1784. It was Beaumarchais who secured for French dramatic authors a fixed proportion of the receipts, and caused this equitable arrangement, previously unknown, to be perpetuated.

Under the Revolution, precisely five years after the production of _The Marriage of Figaro_, the spirit and tone of which seemed to the king himself prophetic of the approaching catastrophe, the Comedie Francaise a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of "Theatre de la Nation, Comediens ordinaires du Roi," a compromise between loyalty to the old state of things and adhesion to the new of which the members of the company were afterwards bitterly to repent. Dissensions now sprang up between the different members of the company, some royalists, others republicans. On the whole, however, the actors and actresses showed a certain apt.i.tude for placing themselves on good terms with the executive power of the moment.

In 1792, on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the players were formally obliged to replace such words as "Seigneur" and "Monsieur" by "Citoyen,"

even when the piece was written in verse. In the cla.s.sical tragedies of Racine the word "Seigneur" constantly occurs, as, for instance, where Agamemnon addresses Achilles, or Achilles Agamemnon. The heroes of the Iliad and of the history of Rome had now to be "Citoyens;" which, apart from the intrinsic absurdity of the thing, could not but spoil the metre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREEN ROOM OF THE THeaTRE FRANcAIS.]

One effect of the Revolution was to deprive the Comedie Francaise of the privilege it had so long and so unjustly enjoyed of incorporating in its company any actor or actress whom it might choose to detach from some other troop, not only at Paris, but in any other part of France.

It at the same time also lost its monopoly. A split having taken place in the company, a second Comedie Francaise was started in the Palais Royal with the celebrated Talma, and with Grandmesnil, Dugazon, and Mme.

Vestris among its artists. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the loss of Talma, the Comedie Francaise kept up against all disadvantages. There was, however, too much sense of art, of dramatic propriety among the members to permit the replacement of the word "Seigneur" by "Citoyen," and as a punishment for neglecting the Governmental order on the subject the whole of the company of the Comedie Francaise was arrested one night and thrown into prison, with the exception only of Mole, who was apparently looked upon as a good Republican, and some other actor who was away from the capital. The piece performed on the night of the arrest had been a dramatic version of Richardson's _Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded_, which, according to the judgment of the Republican Censors, was "full of reactionary feeling." Possibly the nameless hero, Mr. B----, was addressed from time to time not as "Citoyen," but as "Monsieur."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOLIeRE.

(_From the bust by Houdon in the Comedie Francaise_)]

Not only were the actors and actresses of the Comedie Francaise imprisoned, but also the dramatists in the habit of writing for the theatre, with Alexander Duval, author of _Les Heritiers_ and other amusing comedies, and Laya, who had dramatised "Pamela," among them.

One of the members of the Committee of Public Safety, the ferocious Collot d'Herbois, is reported to have said that "the head of the Comedie Francaise should be guillotined, and the rest sent out of the country." The famous actor, Fleury, sets forth in his "Memoirs" that on the margin of the depositions in the case of Mdlle. Raucourt, who had been arrested with the other members of the company, the said Collot d'Herbois had written with his own hand, in red, an enormous G.

This was a death sentence without appeal, G standing for guillotine.

"Arrested in 1793 with most of the princ.i.p.al actors and actresses, she was," says Fleury, "as a first step, imprisoned at Sainte-Pelagie; but already she was marked down for the scaffold. The Queen had protected her; she had received numerous benefits from the Royal Family; and she was suspected of grat.i.tude for so many favours." In common with all her colleagues of the Comedie Francaise, who like herself had been arrested, Fleury among the number, Mdlle. Raucourt owed her life to the courage and ingenuity of a clerk in the employment of the Committee of Public Safety, who destroyed the Acts of Accusation drawn up by Collot d'Herbois for presentation to Fouquier-Tinville. Considerable delay was thus caused, during which the anger entertained against the theatrical troop gradually evaporated, though some of the players remained in prison until the fall of Robespierre. It was understood meanwhile that no such words as "king" or "queen," "lord" or "lady," were to be used on the stage, and the members of the Comedie Francaise had received a sufficiently severe lesson to render them disinclined for the future to set at naught the edict on the subject.

As soon as she had regained her liberty, Mdlle. Raucourt tried to form a company for herself, and, succeeding, took a theatre, which was soon, however, closed by order of the Government, some allusion to its severity having been discovered in one of the pieces represented. Mdlle.

Raucourt thenceforward made no secret of her hostility to the Directory, which, now that the Reign of Terror was at an end, could be attacked, indirectly at least, without too much danger. Fleury tells us that Mdlle. Raucourt's costume was a constant protest against the existing order of things; which, from a feeling of grat.i.tude towards the Royal Family, her constant patrons, and from painful feelings in connection with that guillotine beneath whose shadow she had pa.s.sed, she could not but hate. "She wore on her spenser," says Fleury, "eighteen b.u.t.tons in allusion to Louis XVIII., while her fan was one of those weeping-willow fans, the folds of which formed the face of Marie Antoinette." Fleury speaks, moreover, of a certain shawl worn by Mdlle. Raucourt, of which the pattern, once explained, traced to the eyes of the initiated the portraits of Louis, the Queen, and the Dauphin. One day he accompanied her to a fortune-teller who had been expected to predict the restoration of the monarchy, but who foretold instead the revival of the Comedie Francaise. "The woman," says Fleury, "had read the cards aright, for in 1799 an order from the First Consul re-a.s.sembled in a new a.s.sociation the remains of the company dispersed at the time of the Revolution." But now the theatre was burnt down; and though the Comedie Francaise existed as an inst.i.tution, and received in 1802 a special subsidy of 100,000 francs, it was not until 1803 that, in conformity with an order from the First Consul, it took possession of the building in the Rue Richelieu, close to the Palais Royal, where it has ever since remained.

As under Louis XIV., so under Napoleon, the Comedie Francaise followed the sovereign to his palatial residence wherever it might be; to Saint-Cloud, to Fontainebleau, to Trianon, to Compiegne, to Malmaison, and even to Erfurt and Dresden, where Talma is known to have performed before a "pit of kings." Nor did Napoleon forget the Comedie Francaise when he was at Moscow, during the temporary occupation and just before the fatal retreat; though it may well have been from a feeling of pride, and a desire to show how capable he was at such a critical moment of occupying himself with comparatively unimportant things, that he dated from the Kremlin his celebrated decree regulating the affairs of the princ.i.p.al theatre in France.

It has been the destiny of the Comedie Francaise during the past hundred years to salute a number of different governments and dynasties. That they conscientiously kicked against the Republic in its most aggravated form has already been shown. They had no reason for being dissatisfied with Napoleon; and after the destruction of the Imperial power it was perfectly natural that they should do homage to that house of Bourbon under which they had first been established, and which for so long a period had kept them beneath its peculiar patronage. They now resumed their ancient t.i.tle of "Comediens Ordinaires du Roi," and the direction of the establishment was handed over to the Intendant of the Royal Theatres.

The Comedie Francaise has often been charged with too strict an adherence to cla.s.sical ideas. Yet it was at this theatre that a dramatic work by Victor Hugo, round which rallied the whole of the so-called romantic school, was first placed before the public.

The two most interesting events in the history of the Comedie Francaise are the first production of _The Marriage of Figaro_ in 1784, of which an account has already been given in connection with Beaumarchais and his residence on the boulevard bearing his name, and the first production of _Hernani_ forty-six years afterwards.

_Hernani_ was the third play that Victor Hugo had written, but the first that was represented. There seems never to have been any intention of bringing out _Cromwell_, published in 1827, and known to this day chiefly by its preface. _Marion Delorme_, Victor Hugo's second dramatic work, was submitted to the Theatre Francais, but rejected, not by the management, but by the Censors.h.i.+p, and, indeed, by Charles X. himself, with whom Victor Hugo had a personal interview on the subject. "The picture of Louis XIII.'s reign," says a writer on this subject, "was not agreeable to his descendant; and the last of the Bourbon kings is said to have been particularly annoyed at the omnipotent part a.s.signed in Victor Hugo's drama to the great Cardinal de Richelieu."

But Victor Hugo had the persistency of genius, and though both his first efforts had miscarried, he was ready soon after the rejection of _Marion Delorme_ with another piece--that spirited, poetical work _Hernani_, which is usually regarded as his finest dramatic effort. _Hernani_, like _Marion Delorme_, was condemned by the Censors.h.i.+p; being objected to not on political, but on literary, moral, and general grounds. The report of the Committee of Censors.h.i.+p, scarcely less ironical than severe, concluded in these remarkable terms: "However much we might extend our a.n.a.lysis, it could only give an imperfect idea of _Hernani_, of the eccentricity of its conception, and the faults of its execution.

It seems to us a tissue of extravagances to which the author has vainly endeavoured to give a character of elevation, but which are always trivial and often vulgar. The piece abounds in unbecoming thoughts of every kind. The king expresses himself like a bandit; the bandit treats the king like a brigand. The daughter of a grandee of Spain is a shameless woman without dignity or modesty. Nevertheless, in spite of so many capital faults, we are of opinion that not only would there be nothing injudicious in authorising the representation of the piece, but that it would be wise policy not to cut out a single word. It is well that the public should see what point of wildness the human mind may reach when it is freed from all rules of propriety."

When at last the play was produced there was such a scene in the Comedie Francaise as has never been witnessed before or since. At two o'clock, when the doors were opened, a band of romanticists entered the theatre and forthwith searched it in view of any hostile cla.s.sicists who might be lying hid in dark corners, ready to rise and hiss as soon as the curtain should go up. No cla.s.sicists, however, were discovered; the band of romanticists was under the direction of Gerard de Nerval, author of the delightful "Voyage en Orient," translator of "Faust" in the early days when he called himself simply Gerard, and Heine's collaborator in the French prose translation of the "Buch der Lieder." On the eve of the battle, Gerard de Nerval, as Theophile Gautier has told us in one of many accounts he wrote of the famous representation, visited the officers who were to act under him; their number, according to one account, including Balzac, first of French novelists, if not first novelist of the world; that Wagner of the past, Hector Berlioz; Auguste Maquet, the dramatist; and Joseph Bouchardy, the melodramatist, together with Alexander Dumas, historian (in his "Memoirs") of the rehearsals of _Hernani_, and Theophile Gautier, chronicler in more than one place of its first representation.

Victor Hugo had originally intended to call his play _Three to One_; which to the modern mind would have suggested a sporting drama.

_Castilian Honour_--excellent t.i.tle!--had also been suggested; but the general opinion of Victor Hugo's friends was in favour of _Hernani_, the musical and sonorous name of the hero; and under that t.i.tle the piece was produced.

It has been said that the supporters of Victor Hugo took possession of a certain portion of the theatre as early as two in the afternoon. They had brought with them hams, tongues, and bottles of wine; and they had what the Americans call a "good time" during the interval that pa.s.sed before the public was admitted--eating, drinking, singing songs, and discussing the beauties of the piece they had come to applaud. "As soon as the doors of the theatre were opened the band of romanticists," says Theophile Gautier, "turned their eyes towards the incomers, and if among them a pretty woman appeared her arrival was greeted with a burst of applause. These marks of approbation were not bestowed on rich toilettes and dazzling jewellery, they were reserved for beauty in its simplest manifestations. Thus no one was received with so much enthusiasm as Mdlle. Delphine Gay, afterwards Mme. de Girardin, who, in a white muslin dress relieved by a blue scarf, wore no ornaments whatever. Mdlle. Gay a.s.sured the Duke de Montmorency the morning after the representation, that she had not spent on her dress more than twenty-eight francs."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORNEILLE.

(_From the bust in the Comedie Francaise_)]

The Hugoites did not form a compact body, but occupied different parts of the pit and stalls in groups. They are said to have been easily recognisable by their sometimes picturesque, sometimes grotesque costumes, and by their defiant air. The combatants on either side applauded and counter-applauded, cried "Bravo!" and hissed without much reference to the merits of the piece, and often in attack or defence of supposed words which the piece did not contain. Thus (to quote once more from Theophile Gautier) in the scene where Ruy Gomez, on the point of marrying Dona Sol, entrusts her to Don Carlos, Hernani exclaims to the former, "_Vieillard stupide! il l'aime_." M. Pa.r.s.eval de Grandmaison, a rigid cla.s.sicist, but rather hard of hearing, thought Hernani had said, "_Vieil as de pique! il l'aime_." "This is too much," groaned M.

Pa.r.s.eval de Grandmaison. "What do you say?" replied La.s.sailly, who was sitting next him in the stalls, and who had only heard his neighbour's interruption. "I say, sir, that it is not permissible to call a venerable old man like Ruy Gomez de Silva 'old ace of spades.'" "He has a perfect right to do so," replied La.s.sailly. "Cards were invented under Charles VI. Bravo for _'Vieil as de pique!' Bravo, Hugo!_"

Theophile Gautier declares that Mdlle. Mars could only lend to the proud and pa.s.sionate Dona Sol a "sober and refined talent," as she was pre-occupied with considerations of propriety more suited to comedy than to drama. Victor Hugo himself was, on the other hand, delighted with the performance of the princ.i.p.al actress; and one cannot but accept him as the best judge in the case. It would be impossible, in Victor Hugo's own words, without having seen her, to form an idea of the effect produced by the great actress in the part of Dona Sol, to which she gave "an immense development," going in a few minutes through the whole gamut of her talent, from the graceful to the pathetic, and from the pathetic to the sublime.

The success of _Hernani_ corresponded closely enough with the triumph of the Revolution of July, which brought Louis Philippe to the throne; and under the new and more liberal form of monarchy it seemed as though the rising poet and dramatist, who was soon to establish an undisputed supremacy, would have his own way at the Comedie Francaise as elsewhere.

But his next work, _Le Roi s'amuse_, found no more favour in the eyes of M. Thiers than _Marion Delorme_ had done in those of Charles X.'s ministers, and of Charles himself. _Le Roi s'amuse_ (of which the subject is better known in England by Verdi's opera of _Rigoletto_ than by the drama on which _Rigoletto_ is based) was played but once, and was not revived until some forty years afterwards, when it was produced under the Government of the Third Republic without much success. Victor Hugo's dramas have not, except to the reading public, displaced the tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Rachel as Chimene, Sarah Bernhardt as Phedre are to this day better remembered by the old habitues of the Comedie Francaise than any actors in any of Victor Hugo's parts. That Victor Hugo is one of the greatest poets of the century can scarcely be denied; but his genius is more lyrical than dramatic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VOLTAIRE.

(_From the statue by Houdon in the Comedie Francaise._)]

To show by yet another example that the Comedie Francaise has not been so much opposed as is often a.s.serted to novelty in the dramatic art, it may be mentioned that at this theatre the wildly melodramatic and strikingly original _Antony_ of Alexander Dumas was first produced.

This work, written, not, like Victor Hugo's plays, in verse, but in vigorous prose, has been no more fortunate than other masterpieces of the romantic drama in keeping the stage. The great success it met with at the time of its first production was due in a great measure to the powerful acting of Mme. Dorval. The basis of _Antony_, and, as Alexander Dumas tells us himself in his "Memoirs," its very germ, is a deeply compromising situation in which the hero finds himself with the heroine.

They are on the point of being discovered when, to save the honour of his mistress, Antony (without consulting her on the subject) takes her life. Having stabbed her he exclaims to the persons who now enter the room, "That woman was resisting me; I have a.s.sa.s.sinated her." This outrageous piece had the same fate as Victor Hugo's admirably written and truly dramatic play, _Le Roi s'amuse_, in so far that it was, after a very few representations, forbidden by the Censors.h.i.+p.

In the year 1833 a private person was for the first time named Director of the Comedie Francaise. Jouslin de La Salle was his name, and he was succeeded, first by M. Vedel, in 1837, and afterwards by M.

Buloz, Director of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. In 1852 the affairs of the theatre were entrusted to a committee of six members of the Comedie Francaise under the direction of an "administrator"; the first administrator being M. a.r.s.ene Houssaye, the well-known author and journalist. M. Houssaye was replaced in 1856 by M. Empis, and M. Empis in 1860 by M. edouard Thierry, a dramatist. The present director is M.

Perrin. The subvention paid by the Government to the Comedie Francaise was fixed definitively in 1856 at 240,000 francs a year. Among the actors and actresses who have appeared at this famous establishment, often pleasantly described as La Maison de Moliere (though Moliere, as already seen, never set foot in it), may be mentioned Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mdlle. Mars, Mdlle. Clairon, Mdlle. Contat, Mdlle. Raucourt, Talma, Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt, not to name many excellent comedians who in the present day are almost as well known in London as in Paris.

In the immediate neighbourhood of the Comedie Francaise was born Adrienne Lecouvreur. Less perhaps from the influence of the _genius loci_ than from a desire to imitate the actors and actresses whom, from day to day, she must have seen pa.s.sing her door, little Adrienne accustomed herself at an early age to act plays and scenes from plays with her young companions. Adrienne's talent was soon noticed by an inferior actor named Legrand, who, after teaching her some of the tricks of his trade, procured an engagement for her somewhere in Alsace. It was in the provinces that she formed her style; and for so long a time did she wander about from theatre to theatre that she was already twenty-seven years of age when an engagement was offered her at the Comedie Francaise. Here she was equally successful in tragedy and in comedy, though in the latter line her impersonations seem to have been chiefly confined to high comedy. Thus one of her best parts was that of Celimene in the _Misanthrope_. Adrienne was well acquainted with Voltaire when Count Maurice de Saxe, one of the innumerable natural children of Augustus II., King of Poland--Carlyle's Augustus the Strong--came to try his fortune in Paris. This was in the year 1720. In the first instance he met with no luck; and he had to wait a considerable time before he could get a simple regiment together.

"Although he was scarcely twenty-four years of age," says a remarkable writer of the time, "Maurice had already made eleven campaigns and repudiated one wife. He joined," continues this unconscious humourist, "to the strength of his father the uncultured youth and fiery disposition of a sort of nomad, somewhat like our Du Guesclin, whom ladies used to call the wild boar. Under the guise of a Sarmatian, Adrienne discovered the hero, and undertook to polish the soldier. She was then thirty years of age, and had gained the experience and the pa.s.sion which render a woman alike skilful to please and prompt to love."

Adrienne Lecouvreur was carried off, after a short and somewhat mysterious illness, on the 20th of March, 1730. So sudden was her death that the public, who adored her, would not believe that it arose from natural causes; and the d.u.c.h.ess de Bouillon, known to be her rival and her implacable enemy, was declared by everyone to be her murderess.

According to the story current at the time she owed her death to a box of poisoned sweetmeats, treacherously presented to her, though Scribe and Legouve, in their well-known play, make her die from the effect of a poisoned bouquet given to her by the d.u.c.h.ess, in feigned admiration of her genius. All that is really known on the subject is to be found in the "Memoirs" of the Abbe Annillon, the "Letters" of Mdlle. a.s.se, and a note appended to one of these letters by Voltaire himself.

The popular version of the incidents of Adrienne's death was as follows. One night, when she was playing the part of Phedre, she saw in a box close to the stage the d.u.c.h.ess de Bouillon, who, she knew, was endeavouring to replace her in the affections of Count de Saxe; and the sight of this woman made her deliver with exceptional energy these indignant lines:--