| "Je suis mes perfidies |
| Œnone, et ne suis pas de ces femmes hardies |
| Qui, gôutant dans la crime une tranquille paix, |
| Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais"— |
to apply to herself, begged Racine to alter or erase them. The poet, however, though he yielded the palm to no one as a flatterer of royalty, and was, moreover, under considerable obligations to the king's mistress, indignantly refused to mutilate his play. Several of those present remarked upon the verses; but Madame de Montespan had too much good sense to complain.
As Phèdre, the declamation of which, according to the Abbé du Bois, Racine "had taught her verse by verse," Mlle. de Champmeslé seems to have put the comble upon her fame as a tragédienne. Of all her creations, it is the one that La Fontaine names first in the frontispiece of Belphégor:—
| "Qui ne connaît l'inimitable actrice |
| Représentant Phèdre ou Bérénice, |
| Chimène en pleurs ou Camille en fureur? |
| Est-il quelqu'un qui cette voix n'enchante?" |
So inimitable was she in this character, affording her as it did an opportunity for the display of all the resources of her art, that Phèdre was the play selected to consecrate the birth of the Comédie-Française on Sunday, August 25, 1680; and it was Phèdre again, with Mlle. de Champmeslé in the title-part, which inaugurated the new playhouse in the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, on April 16, 1689.[52]
The popularity of Mlle. Champmeslé was not confined to the theatre. Her house was "the rendezvous of all persons of distinction of the Court and the town, as well as of the most celebrated writers of the time." Among the former were Charles de Sévigné, Madame de Sévigné's troublesome son, the Marquis de la Fare, the author of the curious and all-too-brief memoirs, and the Comtes de Revel and Clermont-Tonnerre. The latter, besides Racine, included Boileau, Valincourt, Racine's successor at the Academy, Chapelle, and La Fontaine, "who very much regretted that he was only a friend" of his charming hostess. The utmost cordiality and an entire absence of the restraints of etiquette characterised these gatherings, and noblemen and writers met on a footing of perfect equality. "Permit me to address you," writes Boileau to the Comte de Revel, in April 1701, "in the familiar tone to which you formerly accustomed me at the house of the famous Champmeslé."
The actress's liaison with Racine was not only public but accepted by the easy morality of the day; Madame de Sévigné jests about it in her letters, and La Fontaine, writing to Mlle. de Champmeslé, mentions it as the most natural thing in the world. Many years afterwards, Boileau reminds Racine of the numerous bottles of champagne which were drunk by the lady's accommodating husband. "You know," adds he, "at whose expense."
According to M. Larroumet, Racine's latest biographer, the poet's passion for the interpreter of his heroines was of a less defensible kind than that which he had felt for her predecessor in his affections, Mlle. du Parc, "with whom he had experienced a sentiment which had the dignity of love." M. Larroumet is of opinion that "he only loved her with the facile love which the professionals of gallantry frequently inspire."
However that may be, the lady appears to have been very far from faithful to the poet. An epigram by Boileau, which is rather too gai for us to transcribe, speaks of "six lovers" (including the husband), and of M. de Champmeslé living on the best of terms with the others and his wife. The favoured gentlemen appear to have been Racine and the four noblemen mentioned above. But the only one of the four about whose relations with the actress we have any details is Charles de Sévigné.
This young gentleman seems to have had something of the Oriental in his temperament; for, at the time that he was paying court to the actress, he was "wearing the chains of Ninon, this same Ninon who corrupted the morals of his father."[53] The celebrated Ninon de Lenclos, it may be mentioned, was then in her fifty-sixth year, but still retained much of her former fascination; indeed, if tradition is to be believed, she had lovers when she was over eighty!