But the mischief was done: no amount of epistles or madrigals could repair it. Gradually people began to think that there might have been more truth in the story about the Genevese lover than they had at first supposed; Voltaire, they reflected, lived close to Geneva, and was probably well informed. Mlle. Raucourt’s many adorers took courage; they redoubled their attentions; they refused any longer to believe her indignant protestations. Nothing, as the actor Fleury observes, is more dangerous to virtue than such incredulity, nothing more disheartening than to make sacrifices in which the world does not believe. Whether Voltaire’s accusation was true or not, certain it is that Mlle. Raucourt ere long came to the conclusion that she had made sacrifices enough, and one fine day the town “learned with stupefaction” that at Compiègne, where the troupe of the Comédie-Française was giving a series of performances before the Court, the impregnable virtue of its idol had at length succumbed.
It was at first reported that the fortress had surrendered to no less a person than the King himself. “No one expected this début,” writes a Parisian staying at Compiègne, “which is not likely to meet with the success of Didon. But she has an excuse. What woman can resist her King?”
Soon, however, this rumour was contradicted. It was not his Most Christian Majesty, but his Prime Minister, the Duc d’Aiguillon, who had triumphed over the resistance of the lady. A more unfortunate choice for an actress who wished to retain her popularity with the Parisians could not have been made. Next to the Chancellor, Maupeou, and the Comptroller-General, the Abbé Terrai, d’Aiguillon was the best-hated man in France.
Mlle. Raucourt’s intimacy with the Minister lasted but a very short time; it was merely a galanterie. But, in March 1774, we learn that she is living openly under the protection of the Marquis de Bièvre, a young officer of Musketeers, with some literary pretensions,[110] who had paid her debts, amounting, it was said, to 40,000 livres, made a settlement upon her, and allowed her a handsome sum per month, for current expenses.
The once modest and retiring young actress, as if resolved to atone for the strict decorum she had formerly imposed upon herself, now lived a life of the utmost luxury and extravagance. She had ten or twelve horses in her stables, rented two or three houses, and kept fifteen servants, while her toilettes were the envy and despair of all feminine Paris. On Good Friday, she drove to the Abbey of Longchamps, in the train of Mlle. Duthé and Mlle. Cléophile, the inamorata of the Spanish Ambassador, two of the most extravagant courtesans of the time, “in a pompous equipage drawn by four horses.” “The carriage was of an apple-green colour, encrusted with different coloured stones, the mountings of the harness were of silver, and the reins of crimson silk.” The chronicler adds that it is common belief that M. de Bièvre is not the only person who pays for these luxuries.
Soon M. de Bièvre was discarded and, “after some excursions into the Court and financial circles,” Mlle. Raucourt accepted the protection of another marquis, de Villette, the dissipated husband of Voltaire’s “Belle et Bonne.” M. de Villette’s reign was even shorter than that of his predecessor in the lady’s affections, and far from a tranquil one. Not content with doing her very best to ruin him by her extravagance, his mistress tried to inveigle him into a duel with the architect Belanger, over some epigram which Sophie Arnould had made at her expense, and was highly indignant when poor Villette, who was of a peace-loving disposition, declined to humour her. After a few weeks, they quarrelled violently over money matters and parted on very bad terms, but not before the marquis had, by a letter to the gazettes, taken the whole town into his confidence in regard to the way the lady had treated him.
