[189] Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 75 et seq. Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
[190] Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
[191] Mémoires de Marmontel (edit. 1804), iii. 224 et seq.
[192] See the author’s “Queens of the French Stage” (London: Harpers’; New York: Scribners’. 1905), p. 314 et seq.
[193] The train of an ordinary actress was held by a page dressed in black and white, but actresses representing queens were entitled to two trains and two pages, who followed them everywhere they went. “Nothing is more diverting,” writes a critic of the time, “than the perpetual movement of these little rascals, who have to run after the actress when she is rushing up and down the stage in moments of great distress. Their activity throws them into a state of perspiration, whilst their embarrassment and blunders invariably excite laughter. Thus a farce is always going on, which agreeably diverts the spectator in sad or touching situations.”
[194] Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
[195] On December 6, which was an off-day at the Opera, Madame Saint-Huberty attended a performance of the Fausse Lord, music by Piccini, words by Piccini fils, at the Comédie-Italienne. At the conclusion of the piece, when she was leaving her box, the whole audience rose, and burst into a tumult of applause, shouting: “Vive la reine de Carthage!” If, remarks Grimm, the public had been aware that, on that very day, by the exercise of rare delicacy and tact, the artiste had succeeded in reconciling Piccini and Sacchini, who had long been at variance, their enthusiasm would have been, if it were possible, even greater.
[196] Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicolas Piccini.
[197] Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 217.
[198] Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, xii. 10.