[209] Cited by Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 186.
[210] Cabanis was the Comte d’Antraigues’s physician in Paris. Shortly before this letter was written, Madame Saint-Huberty had placed herself under his care and presumably he was still prescribing for her.
[211] All sorts of legends have gathered round the Comte d’Antraigues, who is depicted as a kind of Royalist Marat, ready to demand, on the return of the Bourbons, “his four hundred thousand heads.” One story is to the effect that, when in Venice, he had been heard to boast that he had caused several agents of the French Republic to be poisoned.
[212] This was not the only reward of her services which the ex-singer received. In 1804, the Emperor of Austria accorded her a pension of 1000 ducats, “in memory of the services rendered by her to her late Majesty Marie Antoinette of France, as superintendent of the music of that august princess.” As for the Comte d’Antraigues, he was, for some years, in receipt of a handsome pension from the various European Courts, and, in May 1800, received from the king of the Two Sicilies the royal order of Constantine, together with a pension.
[213] Madame Saint-Huberty had, of course, never appeared at the Théâtre-Français. Such is fame!
[214] As a matter of fact, her savings only amounted to some 80,000 francs, the whole of which had been lost during the Revolution.
[215] The Times of July 28, 1812, states that it had been ascertained that Lorenzo was an intimate friend of Sellis, who, after attempting to assassinate the Duke of Cumberland, committed suicide.
[216] L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.