“‘Then, I presume, you have an allowance?’
“‘An allowance! Why should I have that, Madame? M. de Lauraguais has a wife, children, a position to maintain, and I do not see that I could honourably accept the smallest part of a fortune which legitimately belongs to others.’
“‘Oh, _par ma foi_! If I were in your place, I should leave him.’
“‘That may be, but he likes me, and I like him. It may have been imprudent to take him, but, since I have done so, I shall keep him.’
“I do not recollect the remainder of the conversation, but I have an idea that it was as dishonourable on the part of the president’s wife as honourable on the part of the actress.”[18]
If Lauraguais really was so generous a protector as the police-reports and those writers who accept them would have us believe, it is certainly rather surprising to find on November 13, 1759, when the count’s passion for his mistress was undoubtedly at a very high temperature, the sieur Jean Baptiste Delamarre, tipstaff to the Châtelet de Paris, acting on behalf of the sieur Jean Baptiste Desper, perruquier, requiring the attendance of a commissary of police to witness an execution upon the goods of the demoiselle Madeleine Sophie Arnould, residing on the first floor of a house in the Rue de Richelieu. The said demoiselle, it appeared, had, twelve months before, taken the apartment in question, on a lease for three, six, or nine years, at an annual rental of 2400 livres; but the perruquier had not as yet seen any part of that sum. The goods seized were left in the charge of one Chevalier, fruiterer of the Rue Traversière, parish of Saint-Roch, from whom, we may presume, Sophie or Lauraguais subsequently redeemed them.[19]
After her elopement with the Comte de Lauraguais, Sophie became more than ever the idol of the public, and, for the next few years, might without exaggeration have parodied the famous _mot_ of _le Grand Monarque_ and exclaimed: “_L’Opéra, c’est moi!_” Never, declared both public and critics, had the heroines of lyrical tragedy: the Psychés, the Proserpines, the Thisbés, the Iphises, and the Cléopâtres, found so worthy a representative, and, no matter how insipid the opera which related the story of their woes might happen to be, the young singer was always sure of an enthusiastic reception. The patrons of the Palais-Royal seemed indeed as if they could not have enough of her; the directors, who owed to her popularity their increased receipts, were at her feet; every one adored her, or pretended to do so, and every one trembled before her epigrams.