Part 11

“January 20, 1773.--Mlle. Raucourt continues to create the greatest sensation. It is reported that the other day a man entered her dressing-room, who informed her that she could judge from his age and his appearance that he was not prompted by any unlawful motive, but that he was guided solely by a profound sentiment of admiration for her talent; that he entreated her not to be offended with one who, in his enthusiasm, desired to give her proofs of his esteem by a little tribute which he would lay upon her toilette-table; and forthwith deposited there two rouleaux of one hundred louis each.” Mlle. Raucourt, the chronicler adds, graciously replied that it was impossible for her to refuse a gift offered in such terms, and the gentleman departed, without making himself known.[109]

A few days later, the lady received an anonymous offer of 12,000 francs a year, “for so long as she remained chaste.” The writer went on to say that if she decided not to do so, and would grant him the preference, the pension should be doubled. The _Nouvelles à la main_, which reports this incident, informs its readers that it is not yet known which offer Mlle. Raucourt had decided to accept; but since the anonymous “benefactor” was commonly understood to be none other than a Prince of the Blood, the Duc de Bourbon to wit, it would be scarcely reasonable to expect her to continue inflexible.

The young actress, nevertheless, would accept nothing from the duke, and her refusal placed the _comble_ upon her fame. Her enemies declared that she must be “not a woman at all, but a monster”; her idolators could find no words in which to express their admiration.

Voltaire was the first to besmirch the spotless reputation of Mlle. Raucourt. It is said that so much fuss about the virtue of an actress irritated him, and that he was annoyed because the girl’s successes in the classic répertoire had caused the production of his _Lois de Minos_, from which he expected great things, to be indefinitely postponed. As, however, Voltaire, with all his faults, was incapable of deliberately slandering a woman, it is probable that he acted in good faith, prompted by a desire to unmask a hypocrite. Circumstance sometimes obliged the Patriarch to play the hypocrite himself; but he hated hypocrisy in others; and the news that a young _débutante_, solely on account of an undeserved reputation for virtue, was being exalted above his beloved Adrienne Lecouvreur and his favourite interpreter, Mlle. Clairon, may well have filled him with righteous indignation.

However that may be, he wrote to his friend, the Maréchal de Richelieu, that he was informed, on excellent authority, that, while in Spain, the supposed immaculate Raucourt had been the mistress of a gentleman from Geneva, who had been travelling in that country.

As ill-luck would have it, when the letter arrived, Mlle. Raucourt was dining at Richelieu’s house, chaperoned, it is hardly necessary to observe, by her vigilant father; young ladies who valued their reputations did not go unprotected to visit that evergreen sinner. D’Alembert, the Princesse de Beauvau, and Mlle. Clairon’s sometime adorer, the Marquis de Ximenès, were also present. As every one was anxious to know what the great man had to say, Richelieu, without opening the letter, handed it to Ximenès, with a request that he would read it to the company. The marquis complied, and proceeded until he had uttered the fatal sentence, when he stopped abruptly and began mumbling apologies. Terrible was the commotion which ensued. Mlle. Raucourt promptly swooned away; her father drew his sword, swearing that he would proceed to Ferney and run the Patriarch through the body; the Princesse de Beauvau called the maladroit marquis a fool; while wicked old Richelieu, we may presume, looked on choking with suppressed mirth.

On the morrow, the story was all over Paris. The first feeling was one of incredulity--people are always slow to believe that idols of their own creation have feet of clay--and both Court and town took the side of the outraged actress, and declared that she had been grossly calumniated. D’Alembert reported the scene at the marshal’s house, and the feeling which his accusation had aroused, to Voltaire, who, perhaps alarmed for the future reception of his tragedies, hastened to pour the balm of his flattery upon the wound which he had inflicted: “I am the aged Æson, and you the enchantress Medea.” “I have scarcely left to me eyes to see, a soul to admire, a hand to write to you.” And then he breaks forth into verse:

“Raucourt, tes talents enchanteurs Chaque jour te font des conquêtes, Tu fais soupirer tous les cœurs, Tu fais tourner toutes les têtes.

* * * * *

L’art d’attendrir et de charmer A paré ta brillante aurore, Mais ton cœur est fait pour aimer, Et ce cœur ne dit rien encore.”

But the mischief was done: no amount of epistles or madrigals could repair it. Gradually people began to think that there might have been more truth in the story about the Genevese lover than they had at first supposed; Voltaire, they reflected, lived close to Geneva, and was probably well informed. Mlle. Raucourt’s many adorers took courage; they redoubled their attentions; they refused any longer to believe her indignant protestations. Nothing, as the actor Fleury observes, is more dangerous to virtue than such incredulity, nothing more disheartening than to make sacrifices in which the world does not believe. Whether Voltaire’s accusation was true or not, certain it is that Mlle. Raucourt ere long came to the conclusion that she had made sacrifices enough, and one fine day the town “learned with stupefaction” that at Compiègne, where the troupe of the Comédie-Française was giving a series of performances before the Court, the impregnable virtue of its idol had at length succumbed.

It was at first reported that the fortress had surrendered to no less a person than the King himself. “No one expected this _début_,” writes a Parisian staying at Compiègne, “which is not likely to meet with the success of _Didon_. But she has an excuse. What woman can resist her King?”

Soon, however, this rumour was contradicted. It was not his Most Christian Majesty, but his Prime Minister, the Duc d’Aiguillon, who had triumphed over the resistance of the lady. A more unfortunate choice for an actress who wished to retain her popularity with the Parisians could not have been made. Next to the Chancellor, Maupeou, and the Comptroller-General, the Abbé Terrai, d’Aiguillon was the best-hated man in France.

Mlle. Raucourt’s intimacy with the Minister lasted but a very short time; it was merely a _galanterie_. But, in March 1774, we learn that she is living openly under the protection of the Marquis de Bièvre, a young officer of Musketeers, with some literary pretensions,[110] who had paid her debts, amounting, it was said, to 40,000 livres, made a settlement upon her, and allowed her a handsome sum per month, for current expenses.

The once modest and retiring young actress, as if resolved to atone for the strict decorum she had formerly imposed upon herself, now lived a life of the utmost luxury and extravagance. She had ten or twelve horses in her stables, rented two or three houses, and kept fifteen servants, while her toilettes were the envy and despair of all feminine Paris. On Good Friday, she drove to the Abbey of Longchamps, in the train of Mlle. Duthé and Mlle. Cléophile, the inamorata of the Spanish Ambassador, two of the most extravagant courtesans of the time, “in a pompous equipage drawn by four horses.” “The carriage was of an apple-green colour, encrusted with different coloured stones, the mountings of the harness were of silver, and the reins of crimson silk.” The chronicler adds that it is common belief that M. de Bièvre is not the only person who pays for these luxuries.

Soon M. de Bièvre was discarded and, “after some excursions into the Court and financial circles,” Mlle. Raucourt accepted the protection of another marquis, de Villette, the dissipated husband of Voltaire’s “_Belle et Bonne_.” M. de Villette’s reign was even shorter than that of his predecessor in the lady’s affections, and far from a tranquil one. Not content with doing her very best to ruin him by her extravagance, his mistress tried to inveigle him into a duel with the architect Belanger, over some epigram which Sophie Arnould had made at her expense, and was highly indignant when poor Villette, who was of a peace-loving disposition, declined to humour her. After a few weeks, they quarrelled violently over money matters and parted on very bad terms, but not before the marquis had, by a letter to the gazettes, taken the whole town into his confidence in regard to the way the lady had treated him.

Mlle. Raucourt’s conduct grew worse and worse; soon she had become perfectly reckless. Women like Camargo, Clairon, Guimard, Gaussin, and Sophie Arnould had been lax enough in their morals; but, at least, they had been capable of more or less disinterested attachments, and had, moreover, generally contrived to cast a veil over their worst irregularities. Mlle. Raucourt seemed as heartless as she was indifferent to public opinion. She passed from gallantry to gallantry; she ruined foolish young men and then laughed at their folly, cynically observing that “women were the most expensive of all tastes”; she flaunted her profligacy in the face of all Paris, and contracted immense debts, which there was no possibility of her being able to discharge. “In the space of a few months,” writes Grimm, “she astonished Court and town, as much by the excess of her irregularities as she had by the rare prodigy of her innocence. She scandalised even those who were least susceptible to scandal.”

The day of reckoning was not long in arriving. Her renown as a _tragédienne_ disappeared with her reputation for virtue; and this actress who, at the time of her _début_, had been vaunted as the superior of Dumesnil and Clairon, was soon to become one of the most striking examples in theatrical history of the fickleness of the mob. The public decided that it had been the dupe of an unscrupulous hypocrite and burned with righteous indignation. Soon detractors arose: they declared that the young actress had no soul, no sensibility; that her delivery was stilted and artificial; that she indulged too freely in gesticulation; that her acting lacked restraint, and that her voice--that “sweetest, most flexible, most harmonious, most enchanting of voices”--was harsh and unpleasant. They found fault with her figure: her waist was too long, her arms too thin. Finally, they even denied the beauty of her face, on the ground that it was too masculine. “It was as though a bandage had fallen from the eyes of the public.”

There can be very little doubt that Mlle. Raucourt’s acting was now distinctly inferior to what it had been at the time of her first appearance at the Comédie-Française. A dissipated life does not conduce to success in any profession, and it would appear that, so far from making any progress, she had neglected her studies to the point of forgetting much of what Brizard and Mlle. Clairon had been at such pains to teach her. Still, as we have said elsewhere, her talents had been absurdly overrated, and a reaction was bound to set in sooner or later. That it came so quickly, however, and assumed so violent a form was the result of circumstances entirely unconnected with her art.

Her reception as Hermione, in _Andromaque_, in March 1774, was the first sign of the coming storm. According to the _Mémoires secrets_, the acting all round on this occasion left a good deal to be desired; but the public, who had just learned that Mlle. Raucourt was living openly with the Marquis de Bièvre, concentrated its resentment upon her, and she was loudly hissed.

The hostile demonstrations grew more frequent and more pronounced in proportion as the actress’s irregularities became more notorious. Nevertheless, so long as there was nothing worse than innumerable gallantries with which to reproach her, she was not without supporters in the pit, whose acclamations served to counteract, if not entirely to drown, the cries of the malcontents. Presently, however, ugly rumours began to spread--rumours which attributed to the young _tragédienne_ the shameful vices of ancient Greece, and which, there is reason to believe, were but too well justified.[111] Every one now turned against her; those who had been loudest in chanting her praises were now foremost in ridicule and abuse, and such was the general odium which she had contrived to excite that she counted herself fortunate if her appearance on the stage was received in silence. “Never,” wrote Grimm, “was idol worshipped with more infatuation; never was idol broken with more contempt.”

There was, however, a slight reaction in her favour when, on October 30, 1775, she appeared as the Statue, in the _Pygmalion_ of Jean Jacques Rousseau. “She was truly beautiful in this pose,” says the critic of the _Mémoires secrets_. “It is considered the most successful part she has yet undertaken.” And La Harpe writes: “This rôle, which would be suitable for so few women, is precisely that which is most becoming to Mlle. Raucourt. The only thing required of her is to be beautiful, and in that she is a complete success. It is impossible to imagine a more seductive vision than this actress, as she poses on her pedestal at the moment when the veil which has hitherto covered her is drawn aside. Her head was that of Venus, and her leg, half-discovered, that of Diana.”[112]

But this was, after all, only a respite. Soon her humiliations recommenced. Her rivals, Madame Vestris and the elder Mlle. Sainval, powerless, as we have seen, to injure her, so long as she retained her popularity, had not been slow to take advantage of the change in public feeling. A cabal was formed against her at the theatre; she was systematically entrusted with parts quite unsuited to her style of acting, and sometimes called upon, at a few hours’ notice, to appear in characters which she had only partially studied. Thus, during a revival of _Britannicus_, Mlle. Dumesnil, happening to fall ill, the luckless young actress found herself suddenly compelled to play Agrippine, a rôle which, though in later years one of her most successful impersonations, was at this time almost unknown to her. Before the play began, d’Auberval, who by no means approved of the proceedings of the cabal, came before the curtain, informed the pit of Mlle. Dumesnil’s indisposition, and begged its indulgence for her substitute. His request was of no avail; and poor Mlle. Raucourt met with such a reception that she fainted and had to be carried off the stage.

To the intrigues of her rivals and the insults of the pit were now added the importunities and threats of her creditors. In the four years she had been a member of the Comédie-Française she had, besides spending immense sums belonging to her infatuated admirers, contrived to run into debt to the extent of something like 300,000 livres, and went in hourly fear of arrest. At length, the situation became intolerable, and she resolved to seek safety in flight. “It was intended to produce the _Zuma_ of M. Le Fèvre,” writes Grimm, “when the compulsory disappearance of Mlle. Raucourt, who was to have played one of the principal parts, caused the rehearsals to be suddenly interrupted. Sudden as was her disappearance, it has occasioned little surprise.”

Nothing was heard of the fugitive for six weeks, during which, it was subsequently ascertained, she had been hiding in the neighbourhood of Paris, disguised as a dragoon. A good-natured farmer, who mistook her for a young officer in trouble about a duel, had given her shelter. At the end of that time she returned, to find that her name had been struck off the books of the Comédie-Française, and her place given to Mlle. Sainval the younger, who, received with enthusiasm on her _début_, had been subsequently altogether eclipsed by Mlle. Raucourt, and, for some time past, had been playing at Lyons.[113]

At first, Mlle. Raucourt took refuge in the Temple, the sanctuary of insolvent debtors, while some of the few friends still left to her negotiated with her creditors, with a view to obtaining a reprieve. Perhaps the creditors thought that, if time were given to her, the lady might contrive to secure some wealthy admirer, by whom their claims would be settled. Any way, they consented to accord her a few months’ grace, and, in the autumn, Mlle. Raucourt left the Temple and went to live with a Madame Souck, “a German woman of horribly depraved morals,” in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. Madame Souck, it transpired, had introduced Mlle. Raucourt into the house in the temporary absence of the landlord, who, on his return, found her established in a vacant suite of apartments, which she firmly declined to vacate. When he ventured to remonstrate, Madame Souck’s servants threatened him with “_coups de bâton et autres violences_,” and also maltreated one of his tenants, who would appear to have taken the landlord’s part. So threatening, indeed, did the attitude of the two ladies and their domestics become that the poor landlord declared, in a complaint he lodged before a commissary of police, that he dared not even sleep in his own house, “for fear of accidents.”[114]

Madame Souck’s finances, like those of her friend, were in a parlous state, and, in the following spring, a firm of silk-merchants of the Rue Saint-Honoré levied an execution upon her premises, and placed one Thomas Philippe Violet and another bailiff in possession. Madame Souck, however, was not a lady to submit tamely to such inconvenience, and, on March 27, we find Thomas Philippe Violet appearing before a commissary of the Châtelet to lodge a complaint and demand protection against the dame Souck, the demoiselle Raucourt, and other persons, “their accomplices, abettors, and adherents.” In this document, he declares that, on the night of the 25th to 26th inst., at two hours after midnight, the said dame Souck and the said demoiselle Raucourt, “both dressed in men’s clothes,” arrived, accompanied by the said accomplices, abettors, and adherents, and, after creating a terrible uproar and “swearing by the Holy Name of God,” proceeded with blows and kicks to force the doors, and ejected both him and his colleague into the street.[115]

That same day, Mlle. Raucourt was arrested, at the suit of a usurer, who had grown tired of waiting for his money, and conveyed to For l’Évêque. Fortunately for her, she contrived to obtain her release before the news of her arrest had been noised abroad, in which case she would have had any number of detainers lodged against her, and might have remained under lock and key for an indefinite time. The Prince de Ligne, who had, or had formerly had, tender relations with Madame Souck, happened to be in Paris and, at the instance of that lady, intervened on the actress’s behalf. He appears to have settled the usurer’s claim and also to have encouraged a belief that he intended to pay all Mlle. Raucourt’s debts. By this means the _tragédienne_ obtained a fresh respite, which she employed in endeavouring to gain readmission to the Comédie-Française. In this she failed and, finding that her creditors were again on the point of taking up arms, she once more took to flight, and this time left the country, accompanied by her devoted friend, Madame Souck.

The movements of Mlle. Raucourt during the next two years are shrouded in mystery. All that is known for certain, is that she exploited North Germany, Poland, and Russia, and passed some time in Berlin and Warsaw. In July 1778, the _Nouvelles à la main_ report that, at Hamburg, both she and Madame Souck had been arrested on a charge of swindling, and, having been whipped and branded, expelled from the city. This, however, was no doubt only malicious gossip spread about by the young actress’s enemies, determined to keep not only the Comédie-Française, but France itself closed against her; and there was probably more truth in a story from Holland, to the effect that Mlle. Raucourt had become the mistress of a wealthy Russian nobleman and had “squandered in a very short time a large fortune.”

* * * * *

In the meanwhile, great events were taking place in Paris. The alliance between Madame Vestris and Mlle. Sainval the elder, which their common jealousy of Mlle. Raucourt had called into being, had lasted only so long as the total discomfiture of that lady had rendered necessary. Its object accomplished, it was dissolved, and the parties turned their weapons against each other. Counting upon the support of her lover, the Duc de Duras, who, in his capacity as First Gentleman of the Chamber, exercised a not altogether judicious control over the affairs of the Comédie-Française, Madame Vestris appropriated certain characters of the classic répertoire which Mlle. Sainval had hitherto regarded as her exclusive property. The latter angrily protested, and the matter was referred to the Gentlemen of the Chamber, who, at the instance of the Duc de Duras, decided in favour of Madame Vestris. This decision was followed by open war between the two actresses and their respective partisans; nothing else was talked of in the green-rooms, the cafés, and the salons of Paris, and very hard knocks were given and received.

Madame Vestris wrote to the _Journal de Paris_, to justify the course she had taken; Mlle. Sainval promptly replied; but the editor returned her letter, with an intimation that he had received instructions from a high quarter that no reply was to be inserted. Indignant at such injustice, the lady thereupon expanded her letter into a pamphlet, “in which M. de Duras was insulted, and the Queen even mentioned in a manner far from respectful.”[116] Marie Antoinette, who, Madame Campan tells us, was accused, by implication, of leading the King by the nose, seems to have been rather amused than otherwise; but the duke was furious. The pamphlet had contained several of his private letters, and while all playgoing Paris was indignant at the partiality which these revealed, all literary Paris was making merry at the expense of an Academician who could not write his mother-tongue with even an approach to accuracy. The angry nobleman insisted that condign and exemplary punishment should be meted out to the offender, and poor Mlle. Sainval was expelled from the Comédie-Française, prohibited from performing in any provincial theatre, and exiled to Clermont, in Beauvoisis.[117] This high-handed action was bitterly resented by the public. Mlle. Sainval had been far more popular than her rival, whose relations with the Duc de Duras had caused her to be regarded as a minion of the Court, and the habitués of the pit now, almost to a man, declared in her favour. Madame Vestris’s appearance on the stage was the signal for a storm of hisses; while, on the other hand, the younger sister of the disgraced actress was received with tumultuous cheering, and when, one evening, in the character of Aménaïde, in _Tancrède_, she pronounced the line,

“L’injustice à la fin produit l’indépendance,”

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