“Hier un enfant d’Hélicon
D’un secret important m’a donné connaissance.
Ami, les neuf sœurs d’Apollon
N’ont pas toujours été si chastes que l’on pense;
Thalie (ah! qui l’eût cru), sans bruit et sans éclat,
À deux enfants donna naissance,
L’un est Molé, l’autre est Contat.”
Like nearly all the members of her profession, Mlle. Contat was exceedingly charitable, and this fact no doubt contributed not a little to the immense popularity which she enjoyed with the playgoing public. At Lyons, on one occasion, she gave a performance for the benefit of the poor of the city, which realised between three and four thousand livres. At Toulouse, where the ten performances originally arranged for had failed to satisfy the enthusiasm of the public, she gave an eleventh, and distributed the proceeds amidst the poor of Baréges, whither she was proceeding to take the waters. Once, when visiting an asylum for persons who had been born blind, to converse with the inmates and inscribe her name on the list of benefactors, she was the recipient of a pretty compliment from a blind poet, who improvised a quatrain, in which he gallantly informed her that she should not so much pity those who had lost their eyes, as those who had been made wretched by the lustre of her own:
“Digne soutien de l’amiable Thalie,
Sur notre sort pourquoi vous attendrir,
S’il est quelques mortels qui maudissent la vie,
Ce sont que vos yeux ont réduits à souffrir...”
By right of her beauty, her talent, and her successes, Mlle. Contat believed herself invested with the right of imposing her will upon her comrades and dramatic authors. With the latter she was frequently at variance. During the rehearsals of Alexandre Duval’s Edouard en Écosse, she demanded some alteration in one of the scenes. The author refused, declaring that the alteration in question would upset all his combinations, and, on the actress insisting on his compliance with her views, appealed to the other players, who, however, maintained a discreet silence, having no mind to contradict their imperious comrade. Beside herself with passion, the latter threw her part at the author’s head, “swearing by all her gods that nothing should induce her to act in any piece of his.” Duval, thereupon, took his manuscript from the hands of the prompters, and stalked out of the theatre, coldly observing that unless the piece was to be played as he had written it, it should not be played at all. A reconciliation between actress and author was subsequently effected, and the play produced, but, some time later, Duval offended the lady beyond all hope of forgiveness, by daring to offer to Madame Talma a part which she had marked for her own.[159]
Mlle. Contat’s jealousy, indeed, caused her to be anything but beloved by her fair comrades at the Comédie-Française. Like Madame Saint-Huberty at the Opera, she could not endure a rival on the stage. She absolutely refused to be doubled, and, even when illness prevented her appearing, it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could be persuaded to allow any one to replace her.
Moreover, she not infrequently abused her position as queen of the theatre, and her endeavours to push the fortunes of her sister, Émilie Contat, to whom she was always deeply attached, at the expense of more deserving young actresses, was a fruitful source of dissension. Émilie, who had made her début, in the autumn of 1784, as Fanchette, in the Mariage de Figaro, was very far from the “deplorable actress” which Gaboriau declares her to have been[160], and in her rendering of the soubrettes of Molière acquired some little distinction. At the same time, she had no pretensions to be the equal of Mlle. Vanhove, who had made her first appearance at the same time; and Mlle. Contat’s efforts to secure precedence for her sister were strongly resented not only in the theatre but outside it, and drew upon her many violent reproaches in both prose and verse. Marie Antoinette herself intervened on behalf of Mlle. Vanhove, whom she had taken under her protection, and secured for her a part which Louise Contat had intended for her beloved Émilie. When the all-powerful actress learnt that her wishes had been subordinated to those of royalty, she exclaimed: “This Queen has a great deal of influence!”
Nevertheless, Mlle. Contat was sincerely attached to the Royal Family, and to Marie Antoinette in particular. One day, the Queen, who intended to be present at a representation of the Gouvernante, sent her word that she should like to see her play the principal rôle. The part was suited neither to the age nor the talent of the lively actress, and was, besides, a long and difficult one. She might, therefore, have fairly begged to be excused, but, eager to please the Queen, she at once began to study it. In less than two days, she had mastered the five hundred verses of which it consisted, and obtained a great success. Writing to one of her friends soon afterwards, she observed, in allusion to this tour de force: “I was ignorant where the seat of memory lay; I know now that it is in the heart.” This letter, found in 1793 among the papers of a suspected person, was made one of the charges against Mlle. Contat, when, in September of that year, she was arrested, with nearly all the members of the Comédie-Française, but, thanks to the courage of Labussière, she escaped the guillotine[161].
On her release from Sainte-Pélagie, Mlle. Contat returned to the Comédie-Française, now called the Théâtre de l’Égalité, from which, in June 1795, she migrated, with her colleagues, to the Théâtre-Feydeau. After the bankruptcy of Sageret and the dispersal of the company he had formed, she accepted an engagement at the Bordeaux theatre, whither Fleury accompanied her. Here she not only acted, but frequently took part in opéra-comique, and, having an agreeable and well-trained voice, greatly delighted her audiences. The enthusiasm of the Bordelais, both inside and outside the theatre, reached such a pitch as to become positively dangerous for its object. Crowds gathered at the stage door to witness her departure at the end of a performance. They surrounded her, and followed her with such transports of delight that, at once flattered and alarmed, she would press close to Fleury’s side and say, with an air of comic gravity: “My friend, these people enchant me. Had we not better call the guard?”
On the reconstitution of the Comédie-Française, in May 1799, Mlle. Contat resumed her place in the company, and speedily regained all her old popularity. Under the Directory and Consulate, indeed, she was more than ever adored by the public and particularly by the youth of the capital, “who, in their anxiety to applaud her, forgot to pay their tailors’ bills.”
In these later years, Mlle. Contat, having become too “majestic” for the Elmires and Célimènes, had been compelled to abandon the emploi in which she was still without a rival, to play young matrons. If she had been admirable in her former répertoire, in her new rôles she is said to have been absolutely inimitable, and, as Madame de Volmar, in the Mariage secret, Julie, in the Dissipateur, and Madame Evrard, in the Vieux Célibataire, to have reached the very perfection of her art.