The staid Dr. Burney was another of Mlle. Heinel’s admirers, and informs us that, besides the six hundred pounds salary she received from the management of Covent Garden, she was “complimented with a _regallo_ of six hundred more from the Macaroni Club.”
[31] This prince is said to have had sixty acknowledged mistresses, besides occasional and “imperceptible” ones.
[32] In her _Mémoires_, Sophie writes: “The prince had, for a moment, the idea of devoting himself to me. But he wished me to be entirely his own, without any distraction or reserve. I never had any taste for exaggerated grandeurs, and am of the opinion of that philosopher who said that happiness is only to be found in moderation.”
[33] E. and J. de Concourt, _Sophie Arnould_, p. 70. According to the _Chronique scandaleuse_, Sophie had a daughter by the Prince de Condé, who afterwards married the Comte de R***.
[34] He was the architect of Bagatelle, in the Bois de Boulogne, which he built for the Comte d’Artois, and designed the gardens of the Château de Meréville (Seine-et-Oise) and of Belœil, in Belgium, the seat of the Prince de Ligne. Extant specimens of his work are the hôtel built for Mlle. Contat, at the corner of the Rue de Berri, in the Champs-Elysées, and the dome of the old Halle aux Blés, now the Bourse du Commerce.
[35] One which accused her of practising the shameful vices of antiquity. _See_ E. and J. de Goncourt’s _Sophie Arnould_, p. 86 _et seq._
[36] Madame du Barry was, however, amply avenged. Sophie’s comrades of the theatre, scarcely one of whom but had suffered from her sarcastic tongue, were not slow to avail themselves of so excellent an opportunity of paying their tormentor back in her own coin, and, for some time afterwards, never failed to let fall the odious word “_Hôpital_” whenever Mlle. Arnould happened to be within earshot; a proceeding which, Bachaumont tells us, “no doubt greatly humiliated that superb queen of opera.”
[38] Eighteenth-century composers appear to have been continually tinkering with this unfortunate opera, one of the most popular of the famous Lulli-Quinault series. When it was revived in January 1759, La Borde, Louis XV.’s musical _valet-de-chambre_, made various alterations in the music, “which disgusted equally the partisans of the old and the new schools.” In November 1771, Berton, one of the directors of the Opera, substituted some very inferior melodies of his own, which, if possible, were even less to the taste of the audience, and, eight years later, Johann Christian Bach, the eleventh son of the celebrated master, tried his hand at the score, likewise without success.