After Mademoiselle Montansier's liberation from prison, Napoleon Bonaparte was introduced to her by Dugazon and Barras. His ambition had not yet been excited, and Barras—who may, nevertheless, have looked upon him as a possible rival, and one to be dreaded—wished to get up a marriage between him and the fashionable but now somewhat antiquated syren of the Palais Royal. Everything went on well for some time. Then a magnificent dinner was given with the view of bringing the affair to a conclusion; but Bonaparte was very reserved, and Barras now saw that his project was not likely to succeed. At a banquet given by Mademoiselle Montansier, to celebrate the success of the thirteenth Vendémiaire, Bonaparte proposed a toast in honour of his venerable "intended," and soon afterwards she married Neuville.
MADEMOISELLE MONTANSIER.
Mademoiselle Montansier who had been shamefully cheated, indeed robbed, by the Convention, hoped to have her claims recognised by the Directory. Barras offered her one million, six hundred thousand francs. She refused it, the indemnity she demanded for the losses which she had sustained by the seizure of her theatre at the hands of the Convention amounting to seven millions. Napoleon, when first consul, caused the theatre to be estimated, when its value was fixed at one million three hundred thousand francs. After various delays, Mademoiselle Montansier received a partial recognition of her claim, accompanied by an order for payment, signed by the Emperor at Moscow.
Some readers have, probably, been unable to reconcile two facts mentioned above with respect to the Opera under the Convention:—1. That the performers were not paid; and 2. That the public attended the representations in immense numbers. The explanation is very simple. The money was stolen by the Commune of Paris. Gardel, the ballet-master, required fifty thousand francs for the production of a work composed by himself, on the subject of William Tell. Twice was the sum amassed from the receipts and professedly set apart for the unfortunate William Tell, and twice the money disappeared. It had been devoted to the requirements of patriots in real life.
Danton, Hébert, Chaumette, Henriot, Robespierre, all administrators of the Opera; Dubuisson, Fabre d'Eglantine, librettists writing for the Opera, and both republicans had been executed during the Reign of Terror. Chamfort, a republican, killed himself to avoid the same fate.
Coquéau, architect, musician, and writer, the author of a number of musical articles produced during the Gluck and Piccinni contests, was guillotined in the year II. of the republic.
The musician, Edelman, after bringing a number of persons to the scaffold, including his patron and benefactor, the Baron de Diétrich, arrived there himself in 1794, accompanied by his brother.
In the same year Despréaux, leader of the first violins at the opera in 1782, and member of the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1793, killed himself from remorse.
Altogether, sixteen persons belonging to the opera in various ways killed themselves, or were executed in 1792, '93, and '94.
After the fall of Robespierre, the royalists for a time ruled the theatres, and avenged themselves on all actors who had made themselves conspicuous as revolutionists. Trial, a comic tenor, who had made a very serious accusation against Mademoiselle Buret, of the Comédie Italienne, which led to her execution, was forced to sing the Réveil du Peuple on his knees, amid the execrations of the audience. He sang it, but was thrown into such a state of agitation that he died from the effects.