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 dull, wearisome, altogether insupportable, and began to look about for fresh conquests.
She had not far to look. So soon as it was known that the adorable Mlle. Arnould was no longer inaccessible, all the admirers whom the jealous transports of Lauraguais had kept at a respectful distance flocked around her, and Sophie, having broken with the man who had possessed her heart, threw scruples to the winds, and bestowed her favours upon several gallants, varying in social position—or, at least, so M. de Sartines’s inspectors reported—from the Prince de Conti to a handsome young friseur, who called daily to dress the lady’s hair.
But, in spite of these “passades” and the lavish generosity wherewith her titular protector sought to gain her affections, love for Lauraguais still smouldered in Sophie’s breast, and, at the beginning of the following year, only a few days after the enamoured M. Bertin had bestowed upon her the sum of 12,000 livres, by way of a New Year’s gift, all Paris was astonished to hear that she had thrown over the financier and returned to the count.
At first, the public was inclined to applaud what it was pleased to consider the rare disinterestedness of the lady in preferring a comparatively poor admirer to an exceptionally wealthy one. But when it became known that poor Bertin’s brief reign had cost him over 100,000 livres, exclusive of the New Year’s gift mentioned above, it veered round, and Bachaumont reports that the general impression was that the financier had been very hardly treated. He himself expresses the opinion that the favoured lover was in honour bound to indemnify the abandoned one for the very large sums he had expended on the capricious Sophie, and that, as this had not been done, Mlle. Arnould must be held to have gained the affection of tender and susceptible hearts on false pretences, and must therefore—morally at least—“be relegated to the crowd of women from whom she had been drawn.”[26]