Part 17

She accordingly talked the matter over with the author and Dezède, the result being that the piece, which was entitled _Auguste et Théodore, ou les Deux Pages_--it is known to fame by its sub-title--was transferred from the “Italians” to the Comédie-Française, where it was produced on March 6, 1789, Fleury playing the principal part, with Mlle. Contat as the hostess of the tavern.

The anticipations of the actress were fully verified. _Les Deux Pages_ was received with the most unbounded enthusiasm; Fleury made of the warrior king a masterpiece which placed him in the very front rank of his profession;[157] while she herself, we are assured, was “irresistible, her beauty and frank gaiety carrying all before them.”

But we are anticipating. Between the _Mariage de Figaro_ and the production of _Les Deux Pages_ four years had elapsed--years in which Louise Contat had confirmed the great reputation which her creation of Suzanne had secured for her by a series of masterly impersonations. In high comedy, indeed, she was supreme and without a rival. “In her hands the fan became a sceptre. No one comprehended Molière better; no one knew how to interpret more naturally the spirit of Marivaux. She was reproached with a certain amount of affectation; but she knew how to combine the haughty disposition of Célimène with the intelligent vivacity of Dorine. Seductive voice, eloquent eye, charming smile, infinite tact, amiable dignity, perfect knowledge of situations--everything in her combined to enchant an audience. None of the characteristics which distinguished the society of the old régime had escaped her, and ‘from head to foot she was _grande dame_.’”[158]

Her triumphs were not confined to the capital. She made provincial tours--tours which were one long series of ovations, in which crowns of laurels were showered upon her, and thousands of complimentary verses composed in her honour. Once, when playing with Molé, at Marseilles, the following madrigal was addressed to them:

“Hier un enfant d’Hélicon D’un secret important m’a donné connaissance. Ami, les neuf sœurs d’Apollon N’ont pas toujours été si chastes que l’on pense; Thalie (ah! qui l’eût cru), sans bruit et sans éclat, À deux enfants donna naissance, L’un est Molé, l’autre est Contat.”

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:

“Digne soutien de l’amiable Thalie, Sur notre sort pourquoi vous attendrir, S’il est quelques mortels qui maudissent la vie, Ce sont que vos yeux ont réduits à souffrir...”

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:

“Dans les temps de chaleurs extrêmes Heureux d’amuser vos loisirs, Je saurai près de vous amener les Zéphirs, Les Amours y viendront d’eux-mêmes.”

--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

On a certain afternoon, early in September 1777, a rehearsal of Gluck’s _Armide_ was about to begin at the Opera. The stage was crowded with the artistes of both sexes, their friends and their admirers, for, as we have said elsewhere, in those days it was the fashion to attend the rehearsals of any new opera or play which happened to be arousing unusual interest, and the fame of the little German composer was at its height.

It was a brilliant assembly; youth, beauty, talent, rank, and wealth were all represented there. The women especially were in full force, the queens of song and the stars of the dance: Duranceray, Beaumesnil, Sophie Arnould, Rosalie Levasseur, Laguerre, Heinel, Guimard, Peslin, Allard, Théodore, and a bevy of minor divinities, the demoiselles of the ballet and the ladies of the chorus, many of whose names, though unknown to dramatic fame, were already writ large in the annals of gallantry: the two Lilys, the blonde and the brunette; Lolotte, who had the finest horses in Paris; Droma, whose extravagance had so completely ruined a rich merchant of the Rue Saint-Honoré that nothing was left for the unfortunate man but to hang himself, and Rosette, for whose favours two abbés had recently fought.

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!