CHAPTER XXIII

A CENTURY’S CLOSE

We have lingered somewhat over these sketches of the eighteenth century; let us hasten over that century’s close, for was it not steeped in blood?

“Revolution,” did they not call the madness which seized France? Heralded by fair promises of universal brotherhood, what did all the fine talk of her “intellectuals” and “philosophs” end in? A state of anarchy, national madness; in which no man’s life was safe, and no woman’s honour.

War is horrible enough between nations. What, then, is universal war between individuals, “men, _brother_ men?”

Strange, is it not, that while the dying century was performing its dance of death, theatres should be open; operas, comedies, and ballets be performed.

Before Guimard and her literary husband had begun to find their fortunes affected by the advent of the popular madness called Revolution, there were few theatres in Paris. Indeed, there were only five of any importance giving daily performances in 1775 and of these the Opera was of course the leading house as of old--the work of Gluck, Grétry, Piccinni and Sacchini holding the bill in Opera, for a period of some thirty years onward, the work of ballet composition being mainly in the hands of Noverre and the brothers Maximillian and Pierre Gardel.

It was from the end of that year, too, when Noverre’s “Médée et Jason” was produced that the novelty of ballet-pantomime, having come to replace the earlier opera-ballet, now became generally known simply as ballet.

In 1781 the Paris Opera was the scene of a tremendous conflagration, in which, owing to the presence of mind of Dauberval, one of the leading dancers, in quickly lowering the curtain, during a performance of the ballet, the audience were able to escape, but several of the dancers were burnt, and Guimard herself, discovered cowering in one of the boxes clad only in her underwear, was rescued by one of the stage hands. The famous house was ruined, and the company removed to a provisional house erected by the architect Lenoir by the Porte St. Martin.

Ten years later, in 1791, a Royal decree establishing the freedom of the drama did away with the former paucity of Paris in regard to places of amusement, and in that year alone eighteen new theatres were added to those already in existence, and old ones sometimes changed their names.

The Opera was known as _L’Académie Royale de Musique_. Then the King having displeased his people and fled to Varennes, it became simply the _Opera_. Then the King having pleased his subjects they graciously permitted a return to _L’Académie Royale_. Then, a month later, in October, 1791, it became the _Opera-National_; and later the _Théâtre des Arts_, all of which changes foreshadowed in a way the advent of blind Revolution; and the next change of title to _Théâtre de la République et des arts_; which yet was not its final title. Meanwhile, what of the dancers?

Guimard had left the stage in 1790. Two years later the leaders of the ballet were Mlle. Miller (later to become Madame Pierre de Gardel), Mlle. Saulnier, Mlle. Roze, Madame Pérignon, Mlle. Chevigny.

Pierre Gardel, born in 1758 at Nancy, had been _maître de ballet_ at the Opera from 1787, and had produced “Télémaque,” “Psyché,” and other ballets out of which he made a fortune. “Psyché” alone was given nearly a thousand times! In most of them Madame Gardel appeared and with remarkable success. At fifty, as at twenty, she was still admired. She was an excellent mime, a graceful dancer in all styles, seemed in each new _rôle_ to surpass herself, and Noverre, describing her feet, said “they glittered like diamonds.”

Then there were the brothers Malter, the one known as “the bird,” the other as “the Devil,” because he usually played the _rôles_ of demons.

Madame Pérignon, who succeeded Madame Dauberval (_née_ Mlle. Theodore), was a dancer of talent, but was considerably surpassed by Mlle. Chevigny of whom an eyewitness of her dancing remarked: “_Quelle verve! quelle gaîté dans le comique! dans les rôles sérieux, quelle chaleur! quel pathétique! Tout le feu d’une véritable actrice brillait dans ses beaux yeux._”

Then there were Miles. Allard, Peslin, Coulon, Clotilde, Beaupré, Brancher, Chameroy; Gosselin, who was, despite _embonpoint_, so supple as to win the nickname “the Boneless”; Fanny Bias, and Bigottini; and M. Laborie, who in 1790 had “created” the title-_rôle_ in “Zephyre;” Messieurs Lany, Dauberval; Deshayes, a marvel of soaring agility; Henry, whose mobile figure recalled “le grand Dupré”; Didelot, Duport; Auguste Vestris, with whom we have already dealt; and Lepicq, known as the Apollo of the Dance.

Throughout the Revolution the theatres had been open, and had been full. The people had gone mad with lust of blood and lust of power; but the dancers continued to maintain their aplomb in difficult _poses_, and pick their steps, more carefully amid the lit and flowered splendours of the theatre, than statesmen could theirs upon the blood-stained slippery mire of current “politics.”

France might hold its fantastic State ballet, the Fête of the Supreme, indeed might go stark mad, and all Law and Order and Reason be overthrown, but one man, the greatest world-man known to history, was gathering strength to bring order out of chaos, to remake a nation and a nation’s laws; to set the world a-wondering if he should master it.

Strangest of all, perhaps, that he, the great Napoleon, should have found time to flirt with a ballet-dancer--the famous Bigottini, of whom the Countess Nesselrode in her letters said that the effect she produced with her dancing and miming was so moving as to make even the most hardened man weep.

But she seemed rather to have amused Napoleon, more especially when, having told the President of the Legislative Chamber, Fontanes, to send her a present, she received a collection of French classics; and on being asked later by Napoleon--unaware of the nature of the gift--if she was content with Fontanes’ choice, she exclaimed that she was not entirely.

“How so?” asked Napoleon.

Bigottini’s reply must be given in the original.

“Il m’a payée en _livres_; j’aurais mieux aimé en _francs_.”

In spite of the library, Mlle. Bigottini became a millionaire--in francs.