Beaumesnil, who, after gallantries innumerable, married a singer of the Opera, named Belcourt. By that time her charms were on the wane, and, making a virtue of necessity, she became a model wife. One day, some one speaking of her early career, observed that she had then been like a weather-cock, veering round to a new lover every day. “Just so,” answered Sophie, “and very like a weather-cock in this also, that she did not become fixed till she was rusty.”

But Sophie was very far from confining her witticism to her comrades of the Opera; no one was safe from her shafts. When the intriguing old Duc de la Vauguyon, the Dauphin’s governor, who had done his best to sow dissension between that prince and Marie Antoinette, died, he was regretted by no one. The day after his death, the opera of Castor et Pollux was played. In this piece there was a ballet of devils, which on this particular evening went all wrong, whereupon Sophie observed that the devils were so much upset by M. de la Vauguyon’s arrival among them that their heads were turned.

M. de Boynes, who succeeded the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin as Minister of Marine, in 1760, was an honest and well-meaning man, but entirely ignorant of the duties of that important post. One evening he appeared at the Opera, where the scene on the stage represented a ship on a stormy sea. “Oh, how fortunate!” exclaimed Sophie. “He has come here to get some idea of the Navy.”

Better perhaps was her remark about the Abbé Terrai, the detested Comptroller-General of Finance, whose expedients for raising money excited so much indignation in the last years of Louis XV. The abbé, who suffered from a defective circulation, was seen, one bitter winter’s day, with his hands hidden in a huge muff. “What need has he of a muff?” asked the actress. “Are not his hands always in our pockets?”

The Ministers, indeed, seem to have been very favourite objects of Sophie’s sarcasm. On being shown a snuff-box, with the head of the Duc de Choiseul on one side, and that of Sully, the great Minister of Henri IV. on the other, she exclaimed: “Tiens! they have put the receipts and the expenses together.”

The liaison between Sophie and the Comte de Lauraguais was, as might be expected, from the singular character of the latter, not untroubled by storms. The count, though honestly attached to his mistress, was jealous, suspicious, headstrong, and passionate, always full of some new and frequently wild project or other, with which he expected her to sympathise, while the slightest opposition to his wishes was sufficient to throw him into such paroxysms of rage that it was dangerous to approach him.[21] At times, he led poor Sophie a terrible life, and over and over again she was on the point of leaving him. At last, in the autumn of 1761, after their irregular union had lasted about three years, it came temporarily to a close.

Lauraguais had written a tragedy on the not very novel subject of Iphigenia in Tauris.[22] He had dedicated it to Voltaire, and, so soon as it was completed, set out for Ferney, to read it to the Patriarch. It would appear that, for some time past, the count’s vagaries had been more than usually difficult to endure—possibly the labours of composition had not been without their effect upon his temper. Any way, Sophie resolved to profit by this moment of liberty, and no sooner had her tyrannical lover left Paris, than she ordered her coach—a present from the absent Lauraguais—threw into it pell-mell everything portable that she had ever received from him: jewellery, plate, lace, porcelain, and so forth, placed the two children whom she had borne him on the top, and despatched the whole cargo to the Hôtel de Lauraguais, Rue de Lille, with a note for Madame de Lauraguais, in which she stated that “having resolved to recover her freedom, she did not wish to retain anything which might serve to remind her of her unhappy love-affair.”[23] Madame de Lauraguais, who was a good and long-suffering woman, accepted the children, “regretting very much that they were not her own,” but sent back the coach and the rest of its contents.

At the same time, Sophie wrote to Ferney the following letter:

“Monsieur, mon cher ami,—You have written a very fine tragedy, so fine that I can no more understand it than your other proceedings. You have gone to Geneva, to receive a crown of the laurels of Parnassus from the hands of M. de Voltaire, leaving me alone and abandoned to myself. I profit by my liberty, that liberty so precious to philosophers, to leave you. Do not take it ill that I am weary of living with a madman who dissected his coachman, and who wished to act as my accoucheur, with the intention of dissecting me also. Allow me, therefore, to remove myself out of reach of your philosophic bistoury.”[24]

When the Comte de Lauraguais received the aforegoing epistle he was so overcome that he clutched his valet by the shoulder, exclaiming: “Support me, Fabien; this blow is more than I can bear!” Then, bidding a hasty adieu to Voltaire, he posted off to Paris and tried, by promises, threats, and every means he could think of, to induce his mistress to return to him. All his efforts were, however, fruitless, and soon afterwards Sophie placed the comble upon his misery by “coming to an arrangement” with M. Bertin, a wealthy financier.[25]

The gallantry of the eighteenth century, it should be understood, had its etiquette, which was strictly observed by all who wished to be thought men of honour. Before even approaching Sophie on the matter, M. Bertin wrote to the Comte de Lauraguais, to inform him that, having been given to understand that all was at end between the count and Mlle. Arnould, he proposed to take the lady in question under his protection, if she were willing to honour him by accepting it. Sophie consented, on certain conditions; Lauraguais sorrowfully withdrew, and M. Bertin gave a supper-party, at which he formally presented Mlle. Arnould to his friends.

M. Bertin was not only rich and generous, but easy-going, good-tempered, and practical; in fact, the very antithesis of his erratic predecessor. He had lately been cruelly deceived by Mlle. Hus, a star of the Comédie-Française, his admiration for whom is said to have cost him something like a million livres, and his heart positively yearned for sympathy and affection. But alas! Sophie had none to give him. It was in vain that he paid her debts; that he provided a handsome dowry for one of her sisters; that he commissioned a celebrated coachbuilder of the singular name of Antechrist to construct for her an equipage which was the envy and admiration of all the ladies in Paris; that he loaded her with diamonds. The actress soon decided that poor M. Bertin was