"The Marshal, angered by her resistance, caused her to be carried off, and threatened to have Favart killed, if she refused to surrender herself to him. She was terrified, and, through love for her husband, was unfaithful to him.... The Marshal died; and, as the Chantilly mingled with the favours that were snatched from her the most cruel reproaches, she scarcely obtained any advantage besides her freedom."[146]
Towards the end of the following June, the lettres de cachet against Justine and her husband were revoked, and they were permitted to return to Paris. Poor Favart had been reduced to terrible straits. Almost penniless and firmly convinced that all the police in the realm were at his heels, he had for some months past, as we have mentioned, been hiding in a cellar in the house of a compassionate village priest in Lorraine, earning a precarious livelihood by painting fans by the light of a lamp. The cruel treatment he had received had impaired his health and broken his spirit, and he received the news that his trials were at an end with feelings of positive indifference. "It seems," wrote he to a friend who had sheltered him at Strasburg, "that they are tired of persecuting me; my exile is over, but I am none the happier for that; my sorrows are of a kind that can end only with my life."
Three months after this letter was written (November 30, 1750), Maurice de Saxe died at Chambord,[147] and poor Favart could breathe freely once more. The poet might have been pardoned had he sought consolation for his sufferings in some biting epigram at the expense of the man who had wronged him so cruelly. But his kindly and inoffensive nature was incapable of malice, and he behaved with a moderation almost amounting to magnanimity. "I think," he wrote to one of his friends, "that I may be allowed to say on the death of this illustrious man of war, what the father of our theatre said of Cardinal de Richelieu:—
| "Qu'on parle bien ou mal du fameux maréchal, |
| Ma prose ni mes vers n'en diront jamais rien: |
| Il m'a fait trop de bien pour en dire du mal; |
| Il m'a fait de mal pour en dire du bien." |
The Marshal was dead, but his death could not undo the evil he had done. Favart, who had loved his wife with all the strength of his nature, was generous enough to pardon a past in which circumstances had been so terribly against her. Instead of reproaching her, he preferred to forget, and in so doing acted wisely; for in Justine, as long as she lived, he found a devoted friend and a sure counsellor, on whose sympathy and advice he was always able to rely, and a companion whose irrepressible gaiety was proof against all the troubles and anxieties of both family and professional life. But his generosity went no further. If friendship had survived Justine's last infidelity, love had not. "Fly from love as from the greatest of all evils," he wrote to his friend at Strasburg; and, incredible as it may appear, when, not long afterwards, Justine, piqued, we may presume, by her husband's indifference, formed a liaison with the eccentric little Abbé de Voisenon, Favart's friend and reputed collaborator, the poet—this man whom we have seen prefer persecution, exile, and misery to dishonour—so far from endeavouring to put a stop to an affair which amounted to a serious scandal, appears to have regarded it with the utmost complacency.
The removal of their persecutor left the Favarts free to resume their respective professions, and, on May 3, 1751, Justine reappeared on the stage of the Comédie-Italienne, in a piece entitled Les Amants inquiets, of which her husband was the author. At the beginning of the following year, on the death of Riccoboni's wife, she was allotted a full part in the company, to which she remained a tower of strength for nearly twenty years; her talents as an actress and a singer being rivalled by those which she displayed as a dancer, "turning the heads of the public and securing even the support of the women." Her versatility seems to have been truly amazing. "Soubrettes, heroines, country girls, simple parts, character parts, all became her," says Favart in his Mémoires; "in a word, she multiplied herself indefinitely, and one was astonished to see her play the same day, in four different pieces, parts of the most opposite character." Her powers of mimicry, too, particularly of the different dialects of France, have seldom been surpassed. Provincials whose accents she had borrowed could with difficulty be persuaded that she did not come from the same part of the country as themselves.
Possessed of exquisite taste in theatrical matters, Justine laboured strenuously for a reform in stage costume, and was "not afraid to sacrifice the charms of her countenance to truthfulness of representation." Before her time, actresses who played the parts of soubrettes and peasant-girls wore immense paniers, with diamonds in their hair and long gloves reaching to the elbow. But when, in August 1753, she created the rôle of Bastienne in Les Amours de Bastien et Bastienne, a parody of Jean Jacques Rousseau's Devin du village, which she had composed herself in collaboration with Harny, she appeared on the stage wearing a simple woollen gown, with her hair flat on her head, a cross of gold on her neck, bare arms, and wooden shoes. The sabots offended some critics in the pit, and murmurs of disapprobation were heard. The Abbé de Voisenon, however, saved the situation by a happy mot. "Messieurs," he cried, "ces sabots-là donneront des souliers aux comédiens." The pit, appreciating the abbé's wit, broke into laughter and applause; the malcontents were silenced, and the piece had so great a vogue that the players grew tired of acting it long before the attendances showed any signs of diminishing.[148]
Justine, indeed, neglected nothing to arrive at theatrical truth. In Les Trois Sultanes, the plot of which was derived, like several other of Favart's vaudevilles, from the Contes moraux of Marmontel, she played the part of Roxelane in a dress "made at Constantinople with the materials of the country." This was the first occasion on which the costume of Turkish ladies had been seen upon the French stage, and though Favart himself declares that it was "at once decent and voluptuous," it was objected to; and when soon afterwards another play in which the action passed in the Orient was represented before the Court, Justine's reforming zeal received an abrupt check by an order from the Gentlemen of the Chamber to confine herself to the ridiculous and fantastic costume established by custom.
Les Trois Sultanes, it may be mentioned, in spite of the unfavourable comments passed upon Roxelane's attire, was extraordinarily successful; and the audience, we are assured, were transported with enthusiasm. A peasant in the pit, "rendu fou d'admiration," demanded of his neighbour the name of the author, and on being told that it was Favart, exclaimed: "Morbleu! I would that I had that man here; I would embrace him until I had kissed the skin off his cheeks!"
Justine's passion for local colour was again in evidence when the interlude called Les Chinois was represented. "She appeared, as did also the other actors, dressed exactly in the Chinese fashion. The dresses which she had procured had been made in China, while the designs for the scenery and properties had in like manner been made on the spot."