Part 7

M. de Champmeslé, who is described as "a handsome man, with a distinguished air and extremely polished manners," "witty and possessed of all that is required to please and to command love," made a very favourable impression upon Mlle. Desmares. He, on his side, admired her greatly, and very possibly foresaw something of the great career which awaited her. They, therefore, determined to share each other's fortunes, and the young man, having paid a visit to Paris to obtain his parents' consent, they were married on January 9, 1666, at the church of Saint-Éloi, at Rouen.

In view of what we have already said about the practice of the Church in regard to the theatrical profession, it is not without interest to note that the _acte de mariage_ states that the parties "practised the vocation of players," and that the banns had been published, "notwithstanding the fact that they had no intention of abandoning the exercise of their profession at lawful times."

The young couple continued playing in Rouen and the neighbourhood until the summer of 1668, when, alarmed, apparently by the plague, which was devastating Normandy, they removed to Paris. Here Champmeslé, who was by this time a very capable actor, was soon invited to join the company of the Théâtre du Marais; and, at the beginning of the following year, his wife was offered a place in the same troupe.

Mlle. de Champmeslé made her first appearance on the Paris stage on February 15, 1669, in _La Fête de Vénus_, an insipid pastoral, by the Abbé Boyer, in which she impersonated the goddess and was much applauded. In the early months of 1670 she secured two other triumphs. The first was in an "heroic comedy," called _Polycrate_, also by Boyer; and it spoke volumes for the talent and charm of the young actress that the audience should have been content to sit through and applaud five acts of what appears to have been an almost worthless play. Her second success was gained in _Les Amours de Vénus et Adonis_, a tragedy by Donneau de Visé, in which she again represented the goddess, and Robinet chanted her praises:--

"La belle déesse Vénus, Et dans ce rôle cette actrice Est une parfaite enchantrice."

But Mlle. de Champmeslé was but half satisfied with such successes. She was ambitious, and felt that at the Marais her talents had not sufficient scope. The old theatre, as we have said elsewhere, had now fallen on evil days; the pieces represented there seemed sorry stuff indeed in comparison with the comedies of Molière and the tragedies of Racine; it was the Palais-Royal and the Hôtel de Bourgogne which divided the suffrages of the playgoing public; the _salle_ in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple was at times well-nigh deserted. She knew that her true vocation was in tragedy; not in tragedy such as the third-class dramatists who wrote for the Théâtre du Marais penned, but in plays like the _Cid_ and _Polyeucte_, _Alexandre_ and _Andromaque_. On first arriving in Paris, she had had the good sense to recognise that her talents were as yet insufficiently developed to allow of her attempting the great rôles of Corneille and Racine; but now circumstances had changed. Her acting had had the good fortune to attract the attention of a member of the Marais troupe named Laroque, whose acquaintance she had made at Rouen. Laroque, as is not infrequently the case, though only a moderate performer, was an admirable instructor; and, perceiving in his young colleague great possibilities, had devoted much time and care to perfecting her in her art, and with the happiest results. Accordingly, at Easter 1670, Mlle. Champmeslé and her husband quitted the Rue Vieille-du-Temple for the Hôtel de Bourgogne. "Here she met Racine and glory."

The Hôtel de Bourgogne reopened after the Easter recess with a revival of Racine's _Andromaque_ which three years before had aroused an enthusiasm the like of which had not been witnessed since the days of the _Cid_. The part of Hermione was to have been taken by Mlle. Des OEillets, who had created it; but she was lying ill of a malady from which she died not long afterwards, and it was in consequence decided to entrust it to Mlle. Champmeslé. Racine, who knew nothing of the new recruit, and feared that such a difficult role might suffer in the hands of an actress who had never interpreted anything more important than the insipid heroines of Boyer and Visé, refused at first to attend the performance, and, though he ultimately consented to be present, did so with evident reluctance. His apprehensions were groundless. "Mlle. de Champmeslé's rendering of the first two acts was very weak," relates the Abbé de Laporte in his _Annales dramatiques_. "These acts, where Hermione is in turn attracted and repelled by Pyrrhus, require a profound knowledge of the stage and great _finesse_. But in the last acts, where she is a frenzied lover, with whom jealousy carries all before it and to whom a supreme betrayal leaves nothing but vengeance to live for, she retrieved her ground so completely, threw so much fire into her acting, and rendered the passions with such real fervour that she was enthusiastically applauded."

At the conclusion of the play, Racine, enraptured with the young actress's rendering of his heroine, hurried to her dressing-room, and, falling on his knees, overwhelmed her with compliments and thanks. A few days later, Mlle. Des OEillets was sufficiently recovered to pay a visit to the theatre to witness the performance of the new star; and, when the curtain fell, was seen to throw up her hands and exclaim sorrowfully: "Des OEillets is no more!"--words which, coming from an actress who sees herself dethroned by an understudy, are more eloquent than the most exhaustive commentary.

Overjoyed at finding that such an actress had arisen, Racine gave his new interpreter lessons in elocution, "at the same time studying her natural peculiarities, with a view to making them serviceable in any character he might wish her to represent." According to the poet's son, Louis Racine, Mlle. de Champmeslé owed her subsequent successes entirely to his father's teaching. "As he had formed Baron," he says, "he formed the Champmeslé, but with far more trouble. He made her understand the verses which she had to recite, showed her the gestures which were appropriate to each passage, and dictated to her the emphasis which she must employ." There can be no doubt that Mlle. de Champmeslé owed much to Racine's tuition, but it is equally certain that she had great natural gifts as an actress, the chief of which were a peculiar grace of movement and the greatest of all theatrical seductions, a most enchanting voice, which moved La Fontaine to write:--

"Est-il quelqu'un que votre voix n'enchante? S'en trouve-t-il une aussi touchante, Un autre allant si droit au coeur?"

The flexibility of her voice appears to have been quite extraordinary. Melodious, soft, and caressing in rôles like Iphigénie or Monime, it became so powerful and sonorous in such parts as Phèdre, Roxane, and Hermione that, it is said, when the door of the box at the end of the _salle_ happened to be open, it could be heard at the Café Procope, over the way. "The recitation of actors in tragedy," says the anonymous author of the _Entretiens galants_, "is a kind of chant, and you will readily admit that the Champmeslé would not please you so much, if her voice were less agreeable. But she has learned to modulate it with so much skill, and she lends to her words such natural tones, that it would seem that she really has in her heart the passions she expresses with her mouth." In pathetic passages, we are told, she drew tears from the eyes of the most hardened playgoers. "It was amusing to watch the ladies sighing and drying their eyes and the men laughing at them, while they themselves were hard put to restrain their emotion."

There seems to be some difference of opinion as to whether Mlle. de Champmeslé was strictly beautiful. According to the Brothers Parfaict, "her skin was not clear, and her eyes were very small and round." On the other hand, she was "of a fine shape, well made and noble," and "her defects were, so to speak, counterbalanced by the natural graces spread over her whole person." Louis Racine, though he denies her talent, admits that she was handsome; while Madame de Sévigné tells us that she was "almost plain," but "adorable upon the stage." However that may be, she did not lack for admirers, and Racine, who, two years before, had lost his mistress, the beautiful Mlle. du Parc--the actress who had in turn rejected the addresses of Molière, Pierre Corneille, and La Fontaine--speedily fell in love with her, and installed her in the vacant place in his affections, M. de Champmeslé accepting his dishonour with fashionable complacency. Henceforth, as Molière had written for his wife, Racine wrote for his mistress, who created all his great heroines, and "investing them with her own charm, became in truth the _collaboratrice_ of the poet."

"Bénissons de l'amour l'influence divine, C'est à toi, Champmeslé, que nous devons Racine, Il écrivait pour toi, de te plaire occupé, Son vers coulait plus doux de son coeur échappé."

In the early spring of 1670, Louis XIV.'s sister-in-law, the ill-fated Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I., persuaded Corneille and Racine to write each a tragedy on the story of Titus and Berenice, without each other's knowledge, and consequently without the knowledge of any one else. Her object in so doing was, in all probability, merely to bring the relative merits of the two great dramatists to a decisive test, though rumour assigned a romantic reason for her choice of the subject, to wit, a desire to see upon the stage a little story analogous to that of her one-time relations with Louis XIV. _Madame's_ death, famous for its disputed causes and Bossuet's funeral oration, occurred in the following June; but this did not interfere with the completion of the plays, which were produced within a few days of one another, the secret having been so well kept that until then neither of the poets had the faintest conception that they had been simultaneously engaged on the same subject.

Racine was the first in the field, his _Bérénice_ being produced at the Hôtel de Bourgogne on November 21, Floridor playing Titus, and Mlle. de Champmeslé the beautiful Jewess. Corneille's _Tite et Bérénice_ appeared at the Palais-Royal, eight days later, with La Thorillière and Mlle. Molière in the title-parts.

The result of the duel to which the two dramatists found themselves, all unwittingly, committed was wholly in favour of the younger, Corneille's play, notwithstanding some fine passages, being unworthy of his reputation.[44] It was probably to this fact and to the admirable acting of Mlle. de Champmeslé, rather than to any special merits of his own, that Racine was indebted for his easy triumph. Approved by the king and applauded by the public, his _Bérénice_ remained in the bills until after the thirtieth performance; but it did not please the critics, Boileau declaring that had he been consulted he would have endeavoured to dissuade his friend from undertaking so poor a theme; while Chapelle, when asked by Racine for his opinion, replied in two verses of an old song:--

"Marion pleure, Marion crie, Marion veut qu'on la marie."

An answer which nearly caused a quarrel between him and the poet.

To _Bérénice_, early in the following January, succeeded _Baiazet_, Mlle. de Champmeslé playing the part of Roxane. Madame de Sévigné attended the fifth performance, and next day writes to Madame de Grignan: "We have been to see the new play by Racine, and thought it admirable. My _daughter-in-law_[45] is, in my opinion, the best performer I ever saw. She is a hundred leagues in front of Des OEillets, and I, who am supposed to have some talent for acting, am not worthy to light the candles when she appears.... I wish you had been with me that afternoon; I am sure you would not have thought your time ill spent. You would have dropped a tear or two, for I myself shed twenty; besides, you would have greatly admired your _sister-in-law_."[46] _Bajazet_ printed, the Marchioness sent her daughter a copy: "If I could send Champmeslé with it, you would find the tragedy among the best; without her, it loses half its value. Racine's plays are written for Champmeslé, and not for posterity. Whenever he grows old and ceases to be in love, it will be seen whether or not I am mistaken."[47]

Mlle. de Champmeslé did not by any means confine her creations to her lover's heroines; the répertoire of the Hôtel de Bourgogne was a rich one. Thus, in March of that same year, she appeared in the title-part in _Ariane_, a new tragedy by her fellow-townsman, Thomas Corneille. This play was praised by some critics, but, in all probability, owed its success almost entirely to her impersonation of the heroine, "which drew the public as the light draws the moth." Madame de Sévigné was again among the audience, and wrote of the actress in terms of enthusiasm: "The Champmeslé is something so extraordinary that in your life you never saw any one like her. It is the actress that people flock to see, not the play. I went to _Ariane_ entirely for the sake of seeing her. The tragedy is insipid; the rest of the players wretched. But when the Champmeslé appears, every one is enthralled, and the tears of the audience flow at her despair."[48]

When, seven years later, Mlle. de Champmeslé migrated to the Théâtre Guénégaud, it was in _Ariane_ that she secured her first triumph. "_Ariane_," wrote Donneau de Visé in the _Mercure_, "has been extremely well attended. Mlle. de Champmeslé, that inimitable actress, has drawn tears from the majority of the audience." The natural manner of her acting and her pathetic rendering of the hapless heroine gave indeed to the play a new lease of life.

Another brilliant success awaited her in the part of Monime, in Racine's _Mithridate_, produced on January 13, 1673, the day after its author's reception at the Academy. The play was received with enthusiasm; and Madame de Coulanges wrote to Madame de Sévigné, then on a visit to her daughter, in Provence: "_Mithridate_ is charming; you see it thirty times, and the thirtieth it seems finer than the first."[49] On March 4, it was played at Saint-Cloud, before _Monsieur_ (the Duc d'Orléans), the Duke of Monmouth, Madame de Guise, the Princesse de Monaco, and other distinguished persons; and, in the following August, at Saint-Ouen, where Boisfranc, _Surintendant des Finances_ to _Monsieur_, was entertaining a party from the Court. For her rôle, which was a most exacting one--Mlle. Clairon confesses in her _Mémoires_, that she had never succeeded in playing it entirely to her satisfaction--Mlle. de Champmeslé appears to have received very careful instruction from Racine; and the critics were agreed that seldom had anything more expressive and charming than her acting been seen. She was particularly admirable in the scene in the third act, where Monime inadvertently confesses to the jealous Mithridate her love for his son Xiphanès. "Her cry of anguish when she sees that she has betrayed the secret of her heart, sent a shudder through every vein of the spectators and transported them with emotion." Brossette tells us that one day, when dining with Boileau, the conversation turned on the subject of declamation, whereupon the poet repeated this passage in the tone of Mlle. de Champmeslé, as a perfect example of the art.

While Mlle. de Champmeslé continued her successes, Racine completed his eighth tragedy, _Iphigénie en Aulide_, which was produced at Versailles (August 17, 1674), on the occasion of the magnificent _divertissements_ which Louis XIV. gave to his Court on his return from the conquest of Franche-Comté. This time the performance was given in the open air, in the gardens of the château. "The scenery," says Andre Félibien, in his account of the fêtes, "represented a long alley of verdure; on either side were the basins of fountains, and, at intervals, grottoes of rustic workmanship, but very delicately finished. On their entablature rose a balustrade, on which were arranged vases of porcelain filled with flowers. The basins of the fountains were of white marble supported by gilded tritons, and in these basins one saw others of greater height, which bore tall statues of gold. The alley terminated at the back of the theatre in awnings, which were connected with those covering the orchestra, and beyond appeared a long alley, which was the alley of the Orangery itself, bordered on both sides by tall orange-and pomegranate-trees, interspersed with several vases of porcelain containing various kinds of flowers. Between each tree were large candelabra and stands of gold and azure, which supported girandoles of crystal lighted by several candles. This alley terminated in a marble portico; the pilasters which supported the cornice were of lapis, and the door was all of gold work."[50]

In writing _Iphigénie_, Racine had departed considerably from his Greek model, discarding the catastrophe in favour of the legend as recorded by Pausanias, wherein it is discovered, at the eleventh hour, that not the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, but another princess is the victim intended by the gods. Inferior to the noble tragedy of Euripides, the play was, nevertheless, generally acknowledged to be an advance on anything that Racine had yet attempted, and was a brilliant and unanimous success; a success of emotion, to which Mlle. de Champmeslé's pathetic impersonation of the young Greek virgin probably contributed as much as the subject itself, and inspired Boileau to the lines:--

"Jamais Iphigénie en Aulide immolée, N'a conté tant de pleurs à la Grèce assemblée, Que dans l'heureux spectacle à nos yeux étalé En a fait, sous son nom, verser la Champmêlé."

The capital witnessed the new play in the early days of January 1675, and confirmed the judgment of the Court: indeed, for once, criticism appears to have been almost silenced, and the worst that Barbier d'Aucour, a bitter detractor of the poet, could find to say, was that _Iphigénie_ had caused a rise in the price of handkerchiefs.

After _Iphigénie_, Mlle. de Champmeslé became the idol of the playgoing public, and "all Paris" flocked to the Hôtel de Bourgogne, seemingly indifferent to the bill, provided they could see the now famous actress. For nearly two years, however, no rôle at all commensurate with her abilities appears to have fallen to her lot; for Racine was at work on a new tragedy, which, had he never written anything else, would have sufficed to ensure him a high place among tragic dramatists. The story goes that one day, in Madame La Fayette's salon, Racine contended that it was within the power of a great poet to make the darkest crimes appear more or less excusable--nay, to arouse compassion for the criminals themselves. In his opinion, even Medea and Phædra might become objects of pity rather than abhorrence upon the stage. From this view his hearers dissented strongly, showing indeed some inclination to turn it into ridicule; whereupon, in order to convince them of their error, the dramatist determined to measure his strength once more against that of Euripides, and to make the fatal passion of Phædra for her stepson the subject of a tragedy.[51]

But alas! _Phèdre et Hippolyte_ was not destined to take its place as the greatest tragedy of the French classical school without bringing cruel mortification to its author. Racine, by his success, had made many enemies and many more by the caustic wit which he was in the habit of exercising at the expense of any one who happened to incur his displeasure. Among those whom he had contrived to offend were the Duchesse de Bouillon, the fourth of the famous Mancini sisters, and Madame Deshoulières, a clever but pretentious poetess, whose verses Racine had, perhaps unduly, depreciated. No sooner did the two ladies in question ascertain the subject of the forthcoming play than they engaged a young and conceited poet named Pradon, author of a couple of indifferent tragedies, to enter the lists against the famous dramatist and compose a rival _Phèdre_, to be produced at the Théâtre Guénégaud simultaneously with the appearance of Racine's at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Pradon had only three months allowed him; but, nothing daunted, he set to work and completed his task within the allotted time and to his own entire satisfaction. In his vanity, he made no secret of his intention of measuring swords with Racine; and Boileau represented to his friend that it would be more in keeping with his dignity to decline the challenge and postpone the production of his play. But the latter, stung to the quick by the conspiracy which had been formed against him, and urged on by Mlle. de Champmeslé, "who had learned her part and wanted money," decided that it should appear on the date originally fixed.

The play was accordingly produced on New Year's Day 1677, Mlle. de Champmeslé, of course, impersonating the heroine. Pradon's tragedy was to have appeared on the same evening; but the difficulty of finding an actress willing to undertake the principal rôle--it was refused by both Mlle. de Brie and Mlle. Molière--necessitated a postponement of two days, when Mlle. du Pin, a capable, but by no means brilliant, performer, played Phèdre. Pradon ascribed the refusals of the two leading actresses of the company to the machinations of Racine and his friends; but, though Racine was certainly not over-scrupulous in his dealings with his professional rivals, it is more probable that the ladies in question were, not unnaturally, reluctant to challenge comparison with the all-conquering Mlle. de Champmeslé, in a part which was obviously so much better suited to her talents than to theirs.

All went well at the Hôtel de Bourgogne the first evening. M. de Champmeslé himself took possession of the box-office, and when any of the leaders of the rival faction appeared, courteously informed them that every seat in the front part of the house was already occupied; the result being that Racine's admirers had the theatre to themselves, and the play was accorded a reception which could not fail to satisfy the most exacting dramatist. The following evening, however, matters were very different; to the chagrin of the author and the astonishment of the company, every box on the first tier was empty! The same thing occurred the next evening and the next after that, while, to increase the mystery and the poet's mortification, the boxes at the Théâtre Guénégaud were reported as crowded with applauding spectators. The explanation was that the Duchesse de Bouillon, in her determination to secure the success of her _protégé's_ play and the ruin of her enemy's, had adopted the ingenious device of engaging in advance all the front seats at both houses, filling those at the Théâtre Guénégaud with her friends and leaving the others empty.