[113] Collé, Journal (edit. 1868), i. 317. We fear that Collé, who is very severe upon the lady, is hardly an impartial witness, as elsewhere, in his Journal, we read that Mlle. le Duc "meddled with everything, and prevented the Count using his influence except on behalf of herself and her base vassals." As the dramatist was a protégé of Clermont, this would seem to point to some private grievance against her.
[114] The Tenebrae service at the Abbey of Longchamps on Wednesdays and Thursdays in Holy Week was a fashionable function at this period. Its popularity dated from 1727, when the famous singer, Mlle. Lemaure, took the veil, and transferred her services from the stage of the Opera to the abbey choir.
[115] See p. 180, note, supra.
[116] Cited by Jules Cousin, Le Comte de Clermont, sa cour et ses maîtresses.
[117] Catalogue of the Wallace Collection.
[118] Favart is said to have claimed that he had invented the bun. But, as several learned writers assert that it was in vogue in the time of the Crusades, he probably only meant that he had perfected it. See Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et Lettrés, p. 182.
[119] We are not told the name of the farmer-general. In Favart's Mémoires he is referred to merely as M. B***.
[120] Justine's portraits, the most pleasing of which is perhaps Flipart's engraving of the drawing by Charles Nicolas Cochin fils, reproduced in this volume, show us a pretty and vivacious-looking young woman, but with features somewhat too irregular for beauty. It is probable, however, that the attraction which she possessed for her contemporaries was, like that of Mlle. Molière, of the kind in which Nature plays the lesser part, and the desire to please the greater.
[121] A document found in the Bastille on its capture in July 1789, written by one Meusnier, an inspector of police who was employed by Maurice de Saxe in his persecution of the Favarts, and published the same year, under the title of Manuscrit trouvé à la Bastille (signé Meusnier) concernant deux lettres-de-cachet lâchées contre Mlle. de Chantilly et M. Favart par le Maréchal de Saxe, asserts that for some time Justine lived with Favart, as his mistress, in a house in the Rue de Buci. But in the opinion of Desnoiresterres, the best informed of the poet's biographers, this charge is sufficiently controverted by the following letter written by Favart to his fiancée: "Take care of your health; remember that mine is involved in it. You will take more care of yourself, if you have any regard for me, who love you more than life; though do not take offence, for my very sentiments are your eulogy. Your talents seduce me, but your virtue binds me. If your thoughts were in contradiction to your actions, you would be worthy neither of my esteem nor my love.... I am speaking to you against the interests of my heart; but I, at the same time, prove to you that I am the sincerest and the best of your friends."—Favart, Mémoires et correspondance littéraire (edit. 1808), i. 20. Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et Lettrés, p. 196 et seq.
[122] Madame Favart et le Maréchal de Saxe.