Two months later, he returns to the subject in these terms:—
"I must tell you, by the way, that I owe reparation to the memory of the Champmeslé, who died in a sufficiently good state of mind, after having renounced the play, very repentant for her past life, but especially distressed at having to die."
"There is no conversion," very justly remarks M. Larroumet, "that can possibly excuse such language as this."
Mlle. de Champmeslé left behind her two brilliant pupils. The first was Mlle. Duclos, daughter of a former member of the Marais troupe named Châteauneuf, who made her début at the Comédie-Française in 1693, and was soon afterwards engaged to understudy the great actress in first tragedy parts. She excelled in rôles requiring "majesty of bearing and the impetuous sway of passion," and in such secured several notable successes; but her style both of speaking and acting seems to have been very artificial. She was, moreover, cursed with a most abominable temper, which made her a perfect terror to her colleagues at rehearsals, and which she could not always control, even before the audience. At the first performance of La Motte's Inès de Castro, in 1723, a scene which was intended to be intensely pathetic excited the merriment of the pit, upon which Mlle. Duclos, who was playing Inès, stopped the performance, and coming to the front of the stage, shouted angrily, "Foolish pit! You are laughing at the finest thing in the play." On another occasion, when Dancourt apologised to the audience for the lady's non-appearance in one of her most popular rôles, at the same time indicating, by a significant gesture, the cause of her indisposition, the actress, who happened to be standing in the wings, rushed on to the stage, beside herself with passion, and soundly boxed her facetious colleague's ears, amid roars of laughter. In 1733, when in her fifty-sixth year, Mlle. Duclos was foolish enough to marry an actor named Duchemin, a youth scarcely seventeen! Two years later, she was compelled to obtain a separation from her juvenile husband, whom she alleged had "maltreated her daily," and dealt her "coups de pied et de poing tant sur le corps que sur le visage." Mlle. Duclos's most successful creation was Zénobie, in the Rhadaminthe et Zénobie of Crébillon, and among her other impersonations were Ariane, in Thomas Corneille's play of that name, Josabeth, in Athalie, Hersélie in La Motte's Romulus, and the title-part in the Électre of Longpierre. She retired, in 1733, with a pension of 1000 livres from the theatre, and another of the same amount from the court, which she enjoyed for twelve years.
The second of Mlle. de Champmeslé's pupils was her own niece, Charlotte Desmares, of whom we have already spoken. After playing in child-parts for some years at the Comédie-Française, Mlle. Desmares made her début in 1699, the year after her aunt's death. She was an exceedingly pretty young woman, and, though inferior to Mlle. Duclos in declamatory tragedy, greatly her superior in pathetic rôles. Her best tragedy parts were Iphigénie in La Grange-Chancel's Oreste et Pilade, which had been Mlle. de Champmeslé's last creation, Sémiramis in Crébillon's play of that name, Jocaste in the Œdipe of Voltaire, and Antigone in La Motte's Machabées, which crowned her career. She was even more successful in comedy, and no better soubrette had been seen since the days of Madeleine Béjart. In 1715, she became the mistress of the Regent d'Orléans, by whom she had a daughter. "My son," wrote the old Duchesse d'Orléans, "has been presented with a daughter by the Desmares. She tried to pass off another child on him as his, but he replied, 'Non, celui-ci est par trop Arlequin.'"
Mlle. Desmares retired from the stage in 1721, and died in 1743 at the age of sixty-one.
Charles de Champmeslé did not long survive his wife. A curious story attaches to his death. On the night of August 19-20, 1701, he dreamed that his dead mother and his wife appeared to him and beckoned him to follow them. Convinced that this dream was a warning of his approaching death, he went, early the following morning, to the church of the Cordeliers, and, handing the sacristan a thirty-sol piece, requested him to have two Requiem Masses said for the souls of his departed relatives. Then, as the monk was about to return him the change—the fee for a Mass was ten sols—the actor exclaimed: "Keep the balance and say a third Mass for me; I will stay and listen to it." On leaving the church, Champmeslé made his way to a tavern adjoining the Comédie-Française, and sat down on a bench by the door, where he remained for some time, deep in thought. Presently he entered the theatre and walked about the foyer, muttering to himself the old proverb: "Adieu, paniers! vendanges sont faites" ("Farewell, baskets! the grapes are gathered"). He repeated this so often, and his manner appeared so strange, that his colleagues feared his mind had suddenly become affected. But, after a while, he recovered his usual cheerfulness, and invited his brother-in-law, Nicolas Desmares, and several others to dine with him at the tavern, in order to settle some dispute which had arisen between two of them. Scarcely, however, had they reached the door, than Champmeslé staggered, put his hands to his forehead, and fell, face downwards, on the floor. When his friends raised him up, he was dead.