Among other pieces in which Justine appeared with success may be mentioned La Servante Maîtresse, Ninette à la Cour, Annette et Lubin, of which she herself was part author, Les Moissonneurs, and La Fée Urgèle, "in which," says Voisenon, "she played the part of the old woman in a manner impossible to imitate." According to the same authority, Favart was largely indebted for the success of more than one of his productions to suggestions made by his wife, notably in Ninette à la Cour, in which, too, she was responsible for many of the airs.
It would perhaps have been better for Justine's professional reputation had circumstances compelled her to retire from the stage some time earlier than was the case. During her later years, the critics declared that her voice had become thin and disagreeable, and that her acting had lost the naïveté which had been its principal charm. She had become, too, extremely stout, and Madame Necker, then Mlle. Churchod, writing, in 1764, to Madame de Brenles, mentions that she had seen her playing Annette, "with a figure twelve feet broad and two high."[149] The public were more indulgent than the critics; but on December 14, 1769, when she appeared in a vaudeville by her husband called La Rosière de Salency, she was very coldly received. The poor actress, believing herself abandoned by the public whose idol she had so long been, and suffering already from the disease of which she eventually died, played from that time less frequently, and, at the end of the year 1771, ceased to appear altogether. On Twelfth-day she was compelled to take to her bed, and sent for the notaries to make her will. She lingered for four months, enduring terrible sufferings, during which she continued to occupy herself with the management of her household, while her gaiety and insouciance never failed her for a single moment. "One day," says Grimm, "on recovering from a long swoon, she perceived, among those whom her danger had hurriedly assembled around her, one of her neighbours rather grotesquely attired, whereupon she began to smile and remarked that she believed she saw 'the clown of Death'; a characteristic mot in the mouth of a dying girl of the theatre."
Almost to the last Justine seems to have cherished a vague hope that she would ultimately recover, and, for a long time, refused to pronounce the renunciation of her profession which the curé of her parish demanded, according to custom, before administering the last Sacraments. Nor was it until, through the influence of Voisenon, she had obtained a promise from the Gentlemen of the Chamber that her salary should be preserved to her, under the form of a pension, in case of retirement, that she yielded, and exclaimed, smiling: "Oh! for the moment, I renounce it." She then received the Sacraments and, profiting by a short respite from pain, composed her own epitaph, which she set to music. She died on April 21, 1772, at four o'clock in the morning, in her forty-sixth year, and was buried the same day in the church of Saint-Eustache.
Favart survived his talented wife just twenty years, and died in May 1792. Towards the end of his life, he became almost blind, notwithstanding which he continued to work for the theatre, besides keeping up an active correspondence with the Italian dramatist Goldoni, who came to Paris to visit him in 1791. The most successful of his later pieces was La Belle Arsène, music by Monsigny, produced in 1775.
Of his children by Justine, the only one to call for notice here is his second son, Charles Nicolas Joseph Favart. Born in 1749, at the age of twenty-one he was admitted a sociétaire of the Comédie-Française, where he remained for fifteen years. Though but a moderate actor, he was a successful dramatist; his best works were Le Diable boiteux, ou la Chose impossible (1782); Les Trois Folies (1786); Le Mariage singulier (1787); and La Vieillesse d'Annette et Lubin (1791), the last in collaboration with his father. His son, Antoine Pierre Charles Favart (1780-1867), entered the Diplomatic Service, where he gained some little distinction. He assisted Dumolard in editing the Mémoires of his grandfather, collaborated in a couple of plays, and was an amateur painter of some talent.
VI
MADEMOISELLE CLAIRON
FOR more than seven years after the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, her place as a tragic actress remained unfilled. During these years, several capable tragédiennes appeared, notably Jeanne Gaussin, a beautiful brunette with a rich and sympathetic voice, who created the part of Zaïre in Voltaire's tragedy of that name (August 13, 1732), and moved the delighted poet to address her in the following verses:—