There were oceans of trouble about this play, and poor Beauvais was near wild, for Monsieur Voltaire was a troublesome manager, a troublesome actor, a troublesome guest, a troublesome person altogether. The play was given in that great yellow saloon, opening off from the grand staircase, where Molière first gave Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 377 and where Lulli jumped from the stage into the orchestra to amuse Louis le Grand when he was bored with Pourceaugnac. Monsieur Voltaire was, I am sure, much harder to please than Louis le Grand, and Madame du Châtelet was harder to please than Monsieur Voltaire. The performance began at seven o’clock. The king paid the strictest attention to it, and even Madame du Châtelet, who was furiously jealous of every woman on whom Monsieur Voltaire cast his eye, was obliged to behave reasonably. Monsieur Voltaire was stage manager only in this play. The entire cast was good, but not one of the ladies and gentlemen could stand any comparison with Francezka. She was born to be in the very front rank of actresses; she could have stepped from the theater of the castle of Chambord on to the stage of the House of Molière and have won renown. She swayed the audience, an audience composed wholly of fine people, whose hearts are hard to reach, and whose souls are infinitesimal; she swayed them, I say, as if they had all been shopkeepers, and lackeys, and ladies’ maids. As for the pages of honor, the little rogues did nothing but scream with laughter at the comedy parts and blubber vociferously at the moving parts.
The applause at the end of each act was deafening, the king leading off. When the play was over there was frantic hand-clapping, and shouts of “Brava!” succeeded by a general quiet, for the piece was yet to come in which Francezka, Count Maurice of Saxe, and François Marie Voltaire were to be the sole actors and Monsieur Voltaire sole author.
The whole world knows The Tattler, but only those 378 who saw it done at the castle of Chambord on that December night can have any idea of the wit of the lines, the glow of the sentiment, the pure beauty of the acting. Monsieur Voltaire was great as an actor in his own immortal creations. Nobody except that impudent dog of a Jacques Haret ever dreamed of classing Monsieur Voltaire with any but the great of the earth, and Jacques Haret did it out of sheer impudence. I had no love for Monsieur Voltaire, but I can not deny his greatness.
The acting of Count Saxe was like everything else he did, superb. As for Francezka, I ever thought, as was said of the English poet Shakespeare, that she showed her art in her tragedy, but her nature in her comedy. The soft exquisite humor of her Hortensia can not be adequately described. She kept her audience, including the king, in a roar of laughter, and when, fastening her glowing eyes on Count Saxe, as Clitander, she said, in the most innocent sweet voice imaginable, that she had chosen him because he was “sober, sensible, constant and discreet,” even I had to join the shrieks of amusement; and I never thought to laugh at Count Saxe.
I could see that the applause had got into Francezka’s blood. She dearly loved a triumph, and she had one now. She was ever the most graceful creature alive and knew how to make what beauty she had shine, for I have ever said her taste, her grace, her charm and her wit were three-fourths of her beauty. At that moment, therefore, all these things, beauties in themselves, were most in evidence. Her eyes were luminous and had a kind of veiled brilliance. She was smiling—her mouth 379 was not perfectly straight, and when she smiled there was a charming little curve and dimple in the left corner of it, which gave a piquancy to her eloquent face.
She had a tiny foot, and always wore the most beautiful shoes imaginable—and in some way, although she seemed careful not to show her feet, they were always seen. I glanced toward Gaston Cheverny. I was far back, leaning against the wall, that being my usual station, and he was one of a number of gentlemen for whom seats were provided, but who preferred to stand back of the ladies. I saw in his face his pride and love of Francezka. He seemed to me then more like the Gaston of former days than I had yet seen him. My heart warmed a little to him.
When the plays were over Monsieur Voltaire made a short speech. At that stage of his career he was very anxious to curry favor with the great, especially as he knew the king did not like him, but no matter how hard he struggled to be universally flattering, some tinge of his native sardonic humor would crop out in spite of him. For example, he complimented Francezka so highly that there was nothing left to be said of the other ladies, and of course the perfunctory praise he gave them did not make them love him any the better. Then he made a slight though obvious allusion to Francezka’s long waiting for her husband’s return, comparing it to Penelope, which would have been mightily effective if he had not said something further about her bringing conjugal faith into fashion, which was an allusion some of the ladies could not stand at all, and caused Count Saxe to laugh in spite of himself. But on the whole, the affair passed off with the greatest brilliance.
The next thing was the great supper in the hall. Although this was Beauvais’s affair, I was not without responsibility. I had devised a new and splendid form of candlestick for these royal suppers. These candlesticks consisted of a hundred Uhlans, the handsomest men in the battalion, in uniforms of silk and velvet, holding their lances upright, and from the lance-head blazed a flame of perfumed wax. Then there were those damnable little pages. It was their duty to hand the wine at supper and to attend the more distinguished guests; but they were certain to play some pranks if I were not on hand to stop them. So I always remained through the supper.
The king’s table was set as always, on a dais raised a couple of inches from the floor, under a royal canopy of crimson velvet with golden fleur-de-lis. To this table he invited Francezka, besides Madame Villars, Count Saxe, the Duc de Richelieu and one or two others, but he did not ask Monsieur Voltaire. I heard a subdued murmur of speculation as to whether he would be asked or not, and I never yet saw Monsieur Voltaire discomfited that it did not give the assemblage a wicked delight. Madame du Châtelet was already beginning to fume and scowl. It was said that sometimes she and Monsieur Voltaire quarreled to the point of throwing dishes at each other across the table, but they were always ready enough to quarrel with the world on each other’s account.