One thing, however, still remained to her—her wit, which, if it were powerless to retain her wealthy and aristocratic admirers, sufficed to draw to her salon men whose friendship was infinitely to be preferred. Poets, philosophers, encyclopædists, dramatists were all at home in the house of Sophie Arnould. Diderot and d’Alembert were among her most frequent guests; Helvétius, who had once, for a brief period, been very near and dear to her, remained one of her greatest friends; Beaumarchais delighted in an assaut d’esprit with his witty hostess; Rulhière came and brought with him Jean Jacques Rousseau; Marmontel, Duclos, Favart, Linguet, and a host of lesser lights made her salon one of their favourite rendezvous; that most affable of literary noblemen, the Prince de Ligne, seldom failed to make his appearance there whenever he happened to visit the French capital, and Voltaire himself—King Voltaire—when he came to Paris in 1778, to enjoy at last the triumph of his renown at its centre—and to die—condescended to call upon Sophie.
The day and hour of the great man’s visit were duly notified to Sophie, who, knowing what kind of a reception would please him, collected a band of children, headed by her own little daughter, Alexandrine, who, the moment Voltaire entered the room, sprang forward and proceeded to hug and kiss him. The Patriarch was delighted. “You wish to kiss me,” said he laughing, “and I have no face left!”
After conversing with Sophie for some time, the poet remarked: “Ah, Mademoiselle! I am eighty-four years old, and I have committed eighty-four follies.”
“A mere trifle,” replied Sophie consolingly; “I am not yet forty, and I have committed a thousand!”
That same year, Mesmer visited Paris, professing to cure all diseases by means of animal magnetism, and speedily became the doctor à la mode. Some of Sophie’s friends advised her to consult him, but, as she did not happen to have any need of his professional services herself, she sent her lap-dog instead, declaring that, if he could cure that pampered animal, who had been ailing for some time past, presumably as the result of a too generous diet, she would believe in him. Mesmer, anxious to prove that the success of his system was not dependent upon the credulity of the patient, undertook the case, and, in a few days, returned the dog, with the assurance that it was now in the best of health. Sophie thereupon wrote him a letter of thanks, which the doctor sent to the journals. He soon, however, had cause to regret this step, for, four days later, the dog died, much to the joy of the sceptics, who asked Sophie what could have induced her to give the German a testimonial so little deserved. “I have nothing to reproach myself with,” she replied; “the poor animal died in excellent health.”
When Sophie retired from the stage, she was apparently in possession of what most members of her profession, in those days, would have considered a very comfortable income, as from a packet of letters published for the first time by M. Henri Gauthier-Villars, in La Nouvelle Revue (February 1897), we learn that her notary, a certain M. Alleaume, was in the habit of paying her fifty louis a month, out of the moneys she was supposed to lodge in his hands.[59] The maintenance and education of her three children, however, seems to have involved her in considerable expense, while during her long years of prosperity she had acquired such extravagant habits that her income was quite inadequate for her needs, and she was, in consequence, continually in pecuniary difficulties. Her letters to Alleaume, indeed, are almost without exception demands for money, in which she brings all her persuasive powers to bear upon the stern man of business, in the hope of inducing him to unlock his cash-box and advance her “her month.”
“Well, petit père Alleaume,” she writes, “I never see you now, and I ask myself why?—why this difference to poor Sophie?—for it is not kind of you to avoid the poor people who love you. You will reply to that: ‘But it is you who never see me, unless you have something to ask.’
“Wait and see if I never ask for anything, unless I visit you. Here for example: Will you please advance me my month? for I am absolutely without funds.
“Will petit père Alleaume remain inflexible for four days to the request of Sophie?”
And again: