of musketeers to fire on the infamous emissaries of "Pitt and
Coburg." Yet, though the Reign of Terror was a fearful time for art
and artists, there were sixty-three theatres open, and they were always
crowded in spite of war, famine, and the guillotine.

It was fortunate for Sophie Arnould that her connection with the opera
had closed prior to this dreadful period. As stated previously, she
remained undisturbed during the early years of the Revolution. Only
once a band of _sans culottes_ invaded her retreat. To their suspicious
questions she answered by assurances of loving the republic devotedly.
Her unconsciously satirical smile aroused distrust, and they were about
hurrying her off to prison, when she pointed out a bust of Gluck, and
inquired if she would keep a bust of Marat if she were not loyal to
the republic. This satisfied her intelligent inquisitors, and they
retreated, saying, "She is a good _citoyenne_, after all," as they
saluted the marble. During this time she was still rich, having thirty
thousand livres a year. But misfortunes thickened, and in two years she
had lost nearly every franc. Obliged to go to Paris to try to save the
wreck of her estate, she found her hosts of friends dissipated like the
dew, all guillotined, shot, exiled, or imprisoned.

A gleam of sunshine came, however, in the kindness of Fouche, the
Minister of Police, an old lover. One morning the Minister received
the message of an unknown lady visitor. On receiving her he instantly
recognized the still beautiful and sparkling lineaments of the woman he
had once adored. Fouche, touched, heard her story, and by his powerful
intercession secured for her a pension of twenty-four hundred livres and
handsome apartments in the Hotel D'Angevil-liers. Here she speedily drew
around her again the philosophers and fashionables, the poets and the
artists of the age; and the Sophie Arnould of the golden days of old
seemed resurrected in the vivacity and brilliancy of the talk from which
time and misfortune had taken nothing of its pungent salt. In 1803 she
died obscurely; and the same year there also passed out of the world
two other celebrated women, the great actress Clairon and the singer De
Beaumesnil, once Sophie's rival.

Lord Mount Edgcumbe, in his "Musical Reminiscences," speaks of Sophie
Arnould, whom he heard in ante-revolutionary days, as a woman of
entrancing beauty and very great dramatic genius. This connoisseur tells
us too that he