Sophie, finding herself freed from all conventional shackles, gave full play to her tastes, both for luxury and intellectual society.  Her house, the Hotel Rambouillet, was transformed into a palace, and both at home and in the green-room of the opera she was surrounded by a throng of noblemen, diplomats, soldiers, poets, artists—­in a word, all the most brilliant men of Paris, who crowded her receptions and besieged her footsteps.  The attentions paid the brilliant Sophie caused terrible fits of jealousy on the part of Lauraguais, and their life for several years, though there appears to have been sincere attachment on both sides, was embittered by quarrels and recriminations.  Sophie seems to have been faithful to her relation with Lauraguais, though she never took pains to deprecate his anger or avert his suspicions.  Discovering that he was intriguing with an operatic fair one, she contrived that Lauraguais should come on her tete-a-tete with a Knight of Malta.  To his reproaches she answered, “This gentleman is only fulfilling his vows as Knight of Malta in waging war upon an infidel” (infidele).  At last she tired of leading such a fretful existence, and took the occasion of the Count’s absence to break the bond.  She filled her carriage with all of his valuable gifts to herself—­jewelry, laces, and two children—­and sent them to his hotel.  The message was received by the Countess, who gladly accepted the charge of the little ones, but returned the carriage and its other contents.  On Lauraguais’s return he was thrown into the deepest misery by Sophie’s resolve; but, although she was touched by his pleading and reproaches, she remained inflexible.  She accepted, however, a pension of two thousand crowns which his generosity settled on her.  We are told that the sentimental Countess joined with her husband in urging Sophie, who at first refused to receive Lauraguais’s bounty, to yield, saying that her admiration of the lovely singer made her excuse his fault in being unfaithful to herself, and that the children should be always treated as her own.  Such a scene as this would be impossible out of the France of the eighteenth century.

The number of Sophie Arnould’s bon-mots is almost legion, and her good nature could rarely resist the temptation of uttering a brilliant epigram or a pungent repartee.  Some one showed her a snuff-box, on which were portraits of Sully and the Duke de Choiseul.  She said with a wicked smile, “Debit and credit.”  A Capuchin monk was reported to have been eaten by wolves.  “Poor beasts! hunger must be a dreadful thing,” ejaculated she.  A beautiful but silly woman complained to her of the persistency of her lovers.  “You have only to open your mouth and speak, to get rid of their importunities,” was the pungent answer.  She effectually silenced a coxcomb, who aimed to annoy her by saying, “Oh! wit runs in the street nowadays,” by the retort, “Too fast for fools to catch it, however.”  Of Madeleine Guimard, the fascinating dancer, who was exceedingly thin, Sophie said one night, after she had seen her dance a pas de trois in which she represented a nymph being contended for by two satyrs, “It made her think of two dogs fighting for a bone."*