troversy, first between the
adherents of Lulli and Rameau, then between those of Gluck and Piccini.
The young gallants of the day were wont to occupy part of the stage
itself and criticise the performance of the opera; and often they
adjourned from the theatre to the dueling-ground to settle a difficulty
too hard for their wits to unravel. The intense interest appertaining to
all things connected with music and the theatre noticeable in the French
of to-day, was tenfold as eager a century ago. Passionate curiosity,
even extending to enthusiasm, with which that worn-out and utterly
corrupt society, by some subtile contradiction, threw itself into all
questions concerning philosophy, science, literature, and art, found
its most characteristic expression in its relation to the music of the
stage.

It was at this strange and picturesque period, when everything in
politics, society, literature, and art was fermenting for the terrible
Hecate's brew which the French world was soon to drink to the dregs,
that there appeared on the stage one of the most remarkable figures
in its history, a woman of great beauty and brilliancy, as well as an
artist of unique genius--Sophie Arnould. Her name is lustrous in French
memoirs for the splendor of her wit and conversational talent; and
Arsene Houssaye has thought it worthy to preserve her _bon-mots_ in
a volume of table-talk, called "Arnouldiana," which will compare with
anything of its kind in the French language. For a dozen years prior to
the Revolution Sophie Arnould was a queen of society as well as of
art; and in her elegant _salon_, which was a museum of art _curios_
and bric-a-brac, she held a brilliant court, where men of the highest
distinction, both native and foreign, were proud to pay their homage
at the shrine of beauty and genius. There might be seen D'Alembert, the
learned and scholarly, rough and independent in manner, who deserted the
drawing-rooms of the great for saloons where he could move at his ease.
There, also, Diderot would often delight his circle of admirers by the
fluency and richness of his conversation, his friends extolling his
disinterestedness and honesty, his enemies whispering about his cunning
and selfishness. The novelist Duclos, with his keen power of penetrating
human character, would move leisurely through the throng, picking
up material for his romances; and Mably would talk politics and drop
ill-natured remarks. The learned metaphysician Helveti