[55] Charles Boileau, Abbé of Beaulieu, and a member of the Academy.
[56] Here is the renunciation: "In the presence of M. Claude Botte de la Barondière, priest, doctor of theology of the Sorbonne, curé of the church and parish of Saint-Sulpice, at Paris, and the witnesses hereinafter named, Guillaume Marconnau de Brécourt has declared that, having formerly followed the profession of an actor, he renounces it, and promises, with a true and sincere heart, to exercise it no more, even if restored to full and complete health."—Extract from the Register of Saint-Sulpice, cited by M. Gaston Maugras, Les Comédiens hors la loi, p. 154 note.
It appears also to have been customary in the case of an actor to pin to the register of deaths the following paper: "The said person was not absolved and received into holy ground until after having publicly renounced the profession he had formerly exercised, by an act before the notaries."
[57] Among Bossuet's supporters was Père Lebrun, of the Oratory, who published a Discours sur la comédie. One of this good father's chief objections to the theatre was "because it is perpetually turning into Ridicule parents who strive to prevent their children from contracting love-matches."
[58] According to Saint-Simon, the immediate cause of their expulsion was the representation of a licentious comedy, called La Fausse Prude, in which character Madame de Maintenon was easily recognised.
[59] In 1696, the French actors, desirous of testing the legality of the attitude of the Church towards them, addressed a petition to Innocent XII., in which, after representing that they performed in Paris "none but honest plays, purged of all obscenities, and more calculated to influence the faithful for good than for evil, and inspire them with a horror of vice and a love of virtue," they besought him to inform them if the bishops had the right to excommunicate them. The Holy See, however, unwilling to provoke a conflict with the independent French bishops, who, it well knew, would not hesitate to resist its orders, if it took the part of the actors, referred the petitioners to the Archbishop of Paris, "that they might be treated according to the law." A similar fate awaited a second appeal to Clement XI. in 1701.
[60] M. Gaston Maugras, Les Comédiens hors la loi, p. 154 et seq.
[61] Adrienne Lecouvreur, by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé, first represented at the Théâtre de la République, April 1849.
[62] It was only when she became an actress that Adrienne prefaced her patronymic by the article "Le," in order to give it a more artistic sound. For a long time she wrote her name as two words.
[63] Several writers have stated that she was his mistress, but this is incorrect. It was her cousin, the laundress's daughter, who occupied that position.