"A chacone!" ejaculated the astonished composer; "do you think the Greeks, whose manners we are endeavoring to depict, knew what a chacone was?"
"Did they not?" said Vestris, amazed at the information; then, in a tone of compassion, "How much they are to be pitied!"
Gaëtan retired from the stage at the successful début of Auguste, but appeared again from time to time to show his invulnerability to time. On the occasion of his son's first appearance, the veteran, in full court dress, sword, and ruffles, and hat in hand, stepped to the front by the side of the débutante. After a short address to the public on the importance of the choreographic art and his hopes of his son, he turned to Auguste and said: "Now, my son, exhibit your talent. Your father is looking at you." He was accustomed to say: "Auguste is a better dancer than I am; he had Gaëtan Vestris for a father, an advantage which nature refused me." "If," said Gaëtan, on another occasion, "le dieu de la danse" (a title which he had given himself) "touches the ground from time to time, he does so in order not to humiliate his comrades."
* This boast of Gaëtan Vestris seems to have inspired the
lines which Moore afterward addressed to a celebrated
danseuse:
".... You'd swear, When her delicate feet in the dance
twinkle round, That her steps are of light, that her home is
the air, And she only par complaisance touches the
ground."
The son inherited the paternal arrogance. To the director of the opera, De Vismes, who, enraged at some want of respect, said to him, "Do you know who I am?" he drawled, "Yes! you are the farmer of my talent." On one occasion Auguste refused to obey the royal mandate, and Gaétan said to him with some reproof in his tones: "What! the Queen of France does her duty by requesting you to dance before the King of Sweden, and you do not do yours! You shall no longer bear my name. I will have no misunderstanding between the house of Vestris and the house of Bourbon; they have hitherto always lived on good terms." It nearly broke Auguste's heart when one day during the French Revolution he was seized by a howling band of sans culottes and made to exhibit his finest skill on the top of a barrel before this ragged mob of liberty-loving citizens!
The fascinating sylph, Madeleine Guimard, broke almost as many hearts and inspired as many duels as the charming Sophie Arnould herself. Plain even to ugliness, and excessively thin, her exquisite dancing and splendid eyes made great havoc among her numerous admirers. Lord Byron said that thin women when young reminded him of dried butterflies, when old of spiders. The stage associates of Mile. Guimard called her "L'araignée," and Sophie Arnould christened her "the little silkworm," for the sake of the joke about "la feuille." But such spiteful raillery did not prevent her charming men to her feet whom greater beauties had failed to captivate. Houdon the sculptor molded her foot, and the great painters vied for the privilege of decorating the walls of her hotel. When she broke her arm, mass was said in church for her recovery, and she was one of the reigning toasts of Paris. Among the numerous liaisons of Mile. Guimard, that with the Prince de Soubise is most noted. After this she eloped with a German prince, and the Prince de Soubise pursued them, wounded his rival, killed three of his servants, and brought her back to Paris in triumph. After a great variety of adventures of this nature, she married in 1787 a humble professor of dancing named Despriaux. Lord Mount Edgcumbe saw her in 1789 at the King's Theatre in London. "Among them," he writes, referring to a troupe of new performers, "came the famous Mile. Guimard, then nearly sixty years old, but still full of grace and gentility, and she had never possessed more."
IV.
When Sophie Arnould retired from the stage, she took a house near the Palais Royal, and extended as brilliant a hospitality as ever. She was as celebrated for her practical jokes as for her witticisms, of which the following freak is a good example: One evening in 1780 she gave a grand supper, to which, among others, she invited M. Barthe, author of "Les Fausses Infidélités," and many similar pieces. He was inflated with vanity, though he was totally ignorant of everything away from the theatre, and was, in fact, one of those individuals who actually seem to court mystification and practical jokes. Mlle. Arnould instructed her servant Jeannot, and had him announced pompously under the title of the Chevalier de Médicis, giving M. Barthe to understand that the young man was an illegitimate son of the house of Medici. The pretended nobleman appeared to be treated with respect and distinction by the company, and he spoke to the poet with much affability, professing great admiration for his works. M. Barthe was enchanted. He was in a flutter of gratified vanity, and, to show his delight at the condescension of the chevalier, he proposed to write an epic poem in honor of his house. This farce lasted during the evening. The assembled company were in convulsions of suppressed laughter, which broke out when, at the moment of M. Barthe's most ecstatic admiration and respect for his new patron, Sophie Arnould lifted her glass, and, looking at the chevalier, said, in a clear voice, "Your health, Jeannot!" The sensations of poor M. Barthe may readily be imagined. The incident became the story of the day in all circles, and the unlucky poet could not go anywhere for fear of being tormented about "Jeannot."
At length she withdrew completely from the follies, passions, and cares of the world, and bought an ancient monastic building, formerly belonging to the monks of St. Francis, near Luzarches, eighteen or twenty miles from Paris. This grim residence she decorated luxuriously in its interior, and over the door inscribed the ecclesiastical motto, "Ite missa est." Here she remained during the earlier storms of the Revolution, though she occasionally went to Paris at the risk of her head to gratify her curiosity about the republican management of opera, which presented some very unique features. The reader will be interested in some brief pictures of the revolutionary opera.
It was directed by four distinguished sans culottes—Henriot, Chaumette, Le Rouxand, and Hébert. The nominal director, however, was Francoeur, the same who first brought out Sophie Arnould in Louis XV.'s time. Henriot, Danton, Hébert, and other chiefs of the Revolution would hardly take a turn in the coulisses or foyer before they would say to some actor or actress: "We are going to your room; see that we are received properly." This of course meant a superb collation; and, after emptying many bottles of the costliest wines, the virtuous republicans would retire without troubling themselves on the score of expense. As this was a nightly occurrence, and the poor actors had no money, the expense fell on the restaurateur, who was compelled to console himself by the reflection that it was in the cause of liberty. Oftentimes the executioner, the dreaded Sanson, who as public official had the right of entree, would stroll in and in a jocular tone emphasize his abilities as a critic by saying to the singers that his opinion on the execution of the music ought to be respected.*