[139] Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 165.
[140] Madame Dugazon’s feelings were probably intensified by the fact that her husband had espoused the popular side with enthusiasm, and had been appointed aide-de-camp to the notorious Santerre. After the 9th Thermidor, the actor was, for some time, the object of hostile demonstrations whenever he appeared on the stage. But he courageously refused to bow before the storm, and, little by little, the public forgave him. In 1807 he retired from the stage, and, two years later, died, “a raving madman,” on an estate which he had bought near Orléans.
[141] Souvenirs.
[142] He composed three operas: Marguerite de Waldemar (1812), la Noce écossaise (1814), and le Chevalier d’industrie (1818); and two ballets: les Fiances de Caserte and Alfred le Grand. But none of these pieces seem to have been at all favourably received. He died in 1826, five years after his mother.
[143] Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 170.
[144] In Louise Contat’s acte de naissance, which bears date June 16, 1760, her father, Jean François Contat, describes himself as “soldat de la maréchaussée et marchand de bas privilégié à Paris.”—Jal, Dictionnaire de Biographie et d’Histoire, article “Contat.”
[145] Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” ii. 209.
[146] Mémoires de Fleury, ii. 217.
[147] The critic of the Mercure wrote: “What respect can they (men of letters) hope to inspire, when they themselves become the first to denounce their own secret vices, and, to sum up all in one word, when their mind seems to make a jest of calumniating their heart?”
[148] For an account of this affair, see the author’s “Queens of the French Stage,” p. 324 et seq.