Seeing the portraits of Sully and Choiseul on the same snuff-box, she exclaimed, "C'est la recette et la dépense."
To a lady, whose beauty was her only recommendation, and who complained that so many men made love to her, she said, "Eh ma chère il vous est si facile des les éloigner; vous n'avez qu'à parler."
Sophie's affection for the Count de Lauragais, the most celebrated and, seemingly, the most agreeable of her admirers, is said to have lasted four years. This constancy was mutual, and the historians of the French Opera speak of it as something not only unique but inexplicable and almost miraculous. At last Mademoiselle Arnould, unwilling, perhaps, to appear too original, determined to break with the Count; the mode, however, of the rupture was by no means devoid of originality. One day, by Mademoiselle Arnould's orders, a carriage was sent to the Hotel de Lauragais, containing lace, ornaments, boxes of jewellery—and two children; everything in fact that she owed to the Count. The Countess was even more generous than Sophie. She accepted the children, and sent back the lace, the jewellery, and the carriage.
A little while afterwards the Count de Lauragais fell in love with a very pretty débutante in the ballet department of the Opera. Sophie Arnould asked him how he was getting on with his new passion. The Count confessed that he had not made much progress in her affections, and complained that he always found a certain knight of Malta in her apartments when he called upon her.
"You may well fear him," said Sophie, "Il est là pour chasser les infidèles."
SOPHIE ARNOULD.
This certainly looks like a direct reproach of inconstancy, and from Sophie's sending the Count back all his presents, it is tolerably clear that she felt herself aggrieved. He was of a violently jealous disposition, though he had no cause for jealousy as far as Sophie was concerned. Indeed, she appears naturally to have been of a romantic disposition, and a tendency to romance though it may mislead a girl yet does not deprave her.
We shall meet with the charming Sophie again during the Gluck and Piccinni period, and once again when the revolution had invaded the Opera, and had ruined some of the chief operatic celebrities. During her last illness, in telling her confessor the unedifying story of her life, she had to speak of the jealous fury of the Count de Lauragais, whom she had really loved.[43]
"My poor child, how much you have suffered!" said the kind priest.
"Ah! c'était le bon temps! j'était si malheureuse!" exclaimed Sophie.