The Mercure confirms this portrait: "Mlle. Lecouvreur was about the middle height and admirably formed, with a noble and confident air, a well-poised head and shapely shoulders, eyes full of fire, a pretty mouth, a slightly aquiline nose, and very pleasing manners; although not plump, her face was somewhat full, with features admirably adapted to express sorrow, joy, tenderness, fear, and pity."[65]
Nature, besides endowing Adrienne with beauty, had given her an exceedingly susceptible heart. Her letters, published some years ago by M. Georges Monval, though, with one or two exceptions, none of them can be said to come within the category of love-letters, reveal an ardent and imperious need of loving and being loved. "Que faire au monde sans aimer?" she writes to one of her friends; and these words might very well have been taken as her motto.
With her, however, love was very far from being the consuming fire it is with so many of her sex; she was of the race of tender, not of passionate lovers; of the race, too, of those who, scorning the lighter forms of gallantry, and yet unable to preserve their virtue, are so often destined to bitter disappointment, disillusion, and remorse. "Relative of the Monimes, the Bérénices, the La Vallières, and the Aïssés," says M. Paléologue, in his fine study of the actress, "she has their melting tears, their touching grace, and their voluptuous modesty. But her true originality among the women of her time lay in the conception that she formed of love. We know the singular change that this sentiment had undergone beneath the dissolving influence of the morals of the Regency; all that had made up to that time for the nobility and poetry of passion had fallen beneath the blows of the reigning philosophy and the persiflage of the salons. In this transformation the woman had lost more than the man. She had been taught that modesty and fidelity were grandiloquent words devoid of meaning, and, freeing herself from all romantic illusion, and clinging only to the positive and agreeable in her amorous intrigues, she displayed everywhere a cynical libertinism.
"It was the honour of Adrienne to resist this contagion. The gift of her person was always a pledge of the heart. She loved not by caprice, not by vanity, but by a moral inclination, with an ardour, a conscientiousness, and a gravity profound."[66]
The first of the actress's adorers was the Baron D——, a young officer of the Régiment de Picardie, which formed part of the garrison of Lille. Of him we know nothing, save that, after the liaison had lasted some months, he died suddenly, an event which occasioned his mistress such terrible grief that she is said to have seriously contemplated destroying herself. To the baron succeeded a certain Philippe Le Roy, "officer of the Duke of Lorraine," by whom, in 1710, Adrienne had a daughter, baptized as Élisabeth Adrienne. M. Le Roy, however, appears to have proved fickle, for, soon afterwards, we hear of a third lover, a provincial actor named Clavel, brother of Mlle. Fonpré.
With Clavel Adrienne corresponded, and two of her letters to him have fortunately been preserved, the only love-letters of this woman who loved so much that have come down to us. It is much to be regretted that the rest of this correspondence has been lost, as they reveal the actress in a very favourable light: warm-hearted, sincere, loyal, and disinterested.
The first letter, written some time in the year 1710, is in reply to one from Clavel, which she has been impatiently awaiting:—
"I have at last received that letter so eagerly anticipated, and for which I have been astounding Notre Dame des Carmes with my prayers. I can assure thee, my dear friend, that I have had no rest since thy departure, both on account of my uneasiness at not receiving news of thee and of finding myself inconvenienced as I am. I hope to be better now, since I have reason to believe that thou lovest me still and that thou art well. Take care of thyself, I beg of thee, since thy health is as precious to me as my own. I shall be charmed to learn that thou art enjoying thyself, provided that I lose by it nothing of what is mine, and that thou dost not write to me less often.... Assuredly, I believe that thou hast a kind heart, and, consequently, art faithful to thy poor Lecouvreur, who loves thee more than herself.... I embrace thee with all the tenderness of my heart, and swear to thee a constancy proof against all things."
From the second letter, which was written two years later, and which M. Larroumet declares to be "one of the tenderest and most touching letters to be found in literature, real or imaginative, worthy of comparison with the famous letter of Manon Lescaut," it would appear that Clavel had promised to marry Adrienne, or, at least, given her reason to believe that such was his intention; and she refers to the matter with a frankness, a delicacy, and a forgetfulness of self rarely met with where personal interests are at stake:—
"I hardly know what I ought to think of your[67] neglect, at a time when everything ought to alarm me. Be always persuaded that I love you for yourself a hundred times more than on my own account. Time will prove to you, my dear Clavel, what I swear to you to-day. Entertain for me the sentiments that I shall entertain for you all my life, for all my ambition is bounded by that. With all the attachment that I have for you, I should be in despair if you did anything for me with repugnance. Reflect well that you are still master. Consider that I have nothing and that I owe a great deal, and that you will find greater advantages elsewhere. For my part, I have nothing, save youth and good will, but that does not adjust matters. I speak to you plainly, as you see, and I tell you frankly things which are able to make you think of me as one whom you ought to avoid. Here is a chance to take your own part. Have no consideration. Make no promise that you do not intend to keep; were it necessary for you to promise to hate me, it seems to me that it would be easier for me to bear than to find myself deceived.... I tell you again, my dear Clavel, that your interests are dearer to me than my own. Follow the course which will be most pleasing to you. I know you to be of a disposition which will prompt you to behave generously and perhaps to surpass me; but yet once again reflect well. Act like the honest man that you are and follow your own inclination, without troubling about the possible consequences. I shall resign myself, by some means or other, as well as I can, whether I gain or lose you. If I have you, I shall have the sorrow of not rendering you as happy as I should wish; my own happiness will perhaps make me forget the pain.... If I lose you, I shall strive at least not to do so entirely, and I shall still retain some place in your esteem. If you are happy, I shall have the pleasure of knowing that I have not prevented it; or, if you are not, I, at any rate, shall not be the cause, and I shall endeavour in some way to console myself."