The irregularities of Mlle. Contat’s youth, and the fact that she had a daughter and two sons—the paternity of at least one of whom seems to have been very much a matter of opinion—to remind the world of her lapses from the path of rectitude, did not deprive her of the friendship and esteem of many whose friendship and esteem were worth possessing. That this should have been the case was due to two reasons: first, to the fact that she had always been careful to observe some degree of decorum in her gallantries and to cause herself to be regarded rather as the victim of an excessive sensibility—a kind of Adrienne Lecouvreur, in fact—than as a lady of easy virtue; and, secondly, to the very high social qualities which she undoubtedly possessed—qualities in which she was surpassed by few of her contemporaries.
In truth, Louise Contat was a species of grande dame, whose salon partook of the appearance of the salons of former times; one of those delightful rendezvous where the exquisite courtesy and tact of the hostess never failed to place every member of the company, from the highest to the lowest, immediately at his ease. To see the actress in the midst of her guests must have been a useful object-lesson for any lady who aspired to social popularity. “With what art she knew how to talk to some the language of the Court of Marie Antoinette, to the generals of their victories, to the orators, to the financiers, of their ambitions or their affairs; to salute a marquis of thirty-six quarterings with a sweeping courtesy, to carve an epigram, to improvise a quatrain, to analyse a play!... So many qualities attracted, conquered, and retained the most rebellious.”[162]
Mlle. Contat’s early education had been somewhat neglected, but she had contrived to atone for its deficiencies by reading and conversation, and by “that precious faculty of assimilation, of transforming in the crucible of an original nature the knowledge and the talent of others into her own.” Her conversation was always charming and witty, though her wit was untinged by malice—“the irony of Voltaire tempered by feminine sweetness.” On occasion, however, she could be very severe upon those who blasphemed her idol—good taste. One day, a hunchbacked duke, a well-meaning, but somewhat maladroit person, was ill-advised enough to remind her of the days, now alas! long past, when she had possessed the most exquisite figure in Paris. Mlle. Contat, though furious at the pleasantry, dissembled her indignation, but bided her time; and when, the conversation happening to turn upon hunchbacked people, the duke observed that Nature, by way of compensation, almost invariably endowed those so afflicted with intelligence of an unusually high order, exclaimed: “Ah! Monsieur le Duc, vous n’êtes que contrefait!”
Yet she was quite incapable of bearing malice, and more than once gave proof of rare magnanimity. Placed under surveillance in her country-house at Ivry during the Terror, she saved the life of one of her persecutors, who, proscribed in his turn, threw himself upon her compassion. For some days, she concealed him in her room, bringing him his food with her own hands. Then, learning that search-parties were scouring the neighbourhood, and that it was no longer safe for him to remain, she took the gardener’s wife into her confidence, dressed herself in the woman’s clothes, disguised her guest as the gardener’s boy, and drove him in a cart laden with vegetables and milk to Choisy-le-Roi, whence he was able to make his escape to Villeneuve-Saint-George and the Forest of Senart.
“Men of letters and actresses,” remarks M. du Bled, “have always possessed an attraction for one another; interest, end, character, all create between them affinities which result in gallantry, in friendship, and in love; the former invent, the latter execute; glory, gain, success, and failure are their common lot; common also the place of triumph, the judge who awards the palm and the hisses.”[163] Mlle. Contat had many friends in the Republic of Letters, and her salon was one of the most brilliant literary resorts in Paris. Thither came Vigée, author of the successful comedies, Les Aveux difficiles, La Fausse Coquette, and L’Entrevue; Desfaucherets, the improviser of proverbs, whose play Le Mariage secret was ascribed by the sycophantic courtiers of the Restoration to Louis XVIII., just as they ascribed to him Arnault’s Marius à Miturnes and Lemierre’s pretty quatrain for a fan:
“Dans les temps de chaleurs extrêmes
Heureux d’amuser vos loisirs,
Je saurai près de vous amener les Zéphirs,
Les Amours y viendront d’eux-mêmes.”
—Maisonneuve, the author of Roxelane et Mustapha; Arnault, whose once applauded tragedies have long since been forgotten, but whose Souvenirs are still read with pleasure, one of the intimate friends of Bonaparte during the Directory and a confidant of the coup d’État of the 18th Brumaire; and, finally, Lemercier, one of the most original figures of his time—Lemercier, with his half-paralysed body and brilliant wit[164] and feverish energy, perpetually indulging in the wildest pranks and attempting with equal ardour every branch of literature: poems, plays, fiction, and philosophy; a courageous and honest man, too, who declined to bow the knee to Napoleon and saw, in consequence, his works—his chief source of income—spitefully interdicted by the Imperial censors, and the doors of the Academy closed against him.
Under the Empire, the reputation of Mlle. Contat rose, if possible, still higher. Napoleon greatly admired her acting, and she frequently played the leading parts in the theatrical troupe which followed his victorious armies and gave performances in the towns which he had conquered.
On January 26, 1809, Mlle. Contat married Paul Marie Claude de Forges Parny, a retired captain of cavalry, brother—and not nephew, as Gaboriau and several writers state—of the poet, Evarest Désiré Parny.
A few weeks later, yielding to the solicitations of her friends, she decided to retire from the stage, after a career of thirty-four years. It is believed that the attacks made upon her by the critic Geoffroy were not altogether unconnected with this determination. Her last appearance was on March 6, 1809, as the tavern-hostess in Les Deux Pages, on which occasion the whole of the takings were devoted to her benefit. The bill that evening was a triple one. First, Ducis’s adaptation of Othello[165] was presented, with Talma as the Moor. Then came Les Deux Pages; and the entertainment concluded with a grand ballet composed by Gardel, for which all the leading performers of the Opera gave their services. The Emperor and Empress assisted at the representation, which, says the Journal de Paris, was “one of the most brilliant that had taken place at the Théâtre-Français for thirty years.” “The prices,” continues the same journal, “were more than tripled, but, to judge by the eagerness with which the ticket-offices were besieged, one may believe that, even if they had been quintupled, it would not have prevented the theatre from being filled. Mlle. Contat was several times called before the curtain; and all the spectators were unanimous in demanding her reappearance after the performance, which did not conclude until a very late hour.”[166]